Board of Aldermen — 4/11/17 Page 19
Alderman Deane
The way the position has been allocated through wastewater and solid waste as enterprise funds is above
board and completely legal.
Attorney Bolton
Yes.
Alderman Deane
The public should know that. People get up and imply things that aren’t correct. Thank you.
Alderman Schoneman
| had a question on the same topic for Attorney Bolton or for anyone who can answer the question. How do we
account for that time? Is it punch card or just a note in the book? How do we account for an accurate time?
Just again, for public knowledge and for mine?
Attorney Bolton
I’m not an expert about how it is done for every position. | think in engineering it’s done by keeping track of
hours work. Whether they do that through the Kronos automated computerization system or whether they do
that by means of handwritten time records, | am not qualified to answer that. But | believe it is done on an
hour-by-hour basis.
Alderman Siegel
The split positions are approved in the budget. Nobody is punching a clock. When we get the budget book,
hopefully everybody recognizes when they read the budget, there is an entire set of pages on split positions
which happen across multiple departments. The street department has that, of course, in addition to
wastewater. It’s allocated based on historical data of how employees have typically allocated their times. That
happens upfront.
| also want to point out that the first step in that process is the Board of Public Works. Should the Board of
Public Works choose to do something different with their split positions, they control those personnel. Before it
even gets here, that decision is up to the Board of Public Works. So to have a Board of Public Works
commissioner come in here and say there’s an issue, well there’s a venue for that and that’s the venue that
that elected official is part of. There’s nothing going on that’s weird. It’s very, very common. In most
companies, it is a requirement because you want to properly allocate for resources. So let’s set that aside
because that’s a non-issue.
Getting to the specifics of the legislation, I’m going to simplify this as simple as it can be. There’s Column A
and there’s Column b. Column A, everything gets put under the Cap. We have to find $9 million to fund that
above all our other obligations. Column B, is okay, some people are nto happy because it potentially, not
actually, potentially leaves some space for spending that they otherwise may not want to do. But that’s of
course why we have budgeting processes. We can approve or disapprove anything we want. Column A is a
nuclear option which basically will very much harm the city in my opinion. | don’t believe that there are many
options for us to deal with Column A. Column B is a perception issue which some people may or may not like
and that is their prerogative. We all vote for different reasons, and we all have different perspectives. My
colleague, Alderman Schoneman, said that we shouldn’t necessarily accept this the way it is, and | understand
he said there is a process in place, which is an override process, to deal with these situations. | would suggest
to you that that is not a process. That is a consequence. A process is what you look at to get yourself out of a
situation before you pull the rip cord and have the consequence happen.
