PERSONNEL & ADMINISTRATION COMMITTEE

Monday, April 17, 2023 - 10:00 AM

Stephanie DeZalia, Chairperson

JoePete Wilson, Vice-Chairperson

Chairwoman DeZalia called this Personnel Meeting to order at 10:35 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Robin DeLoria, Stephanie DeZalia, Derek Doty, Charlie Harrington, Roy Holzer, Ken Hughes, Steve McNally, Noel Merrihew, James Monty, Tom Scozzafava, Matt Stanley, Ike Tyler, Joe Pete Wilson, Davina Winemiller, Margaret Wood and Mark Wright. Shaun Gillilland was excused.

Department Heads present: Jim Dougan, Judy Garrison, Jennifer Mascarenas and Michael Mascarenas.

Media present: Sun News - Alana Penny

DEZALIA: Alright we are going to get this Personnel & Administration meeting off, starting with Jen Mascarenas. Good morning Jen. Hopefully you have some good news on recruitments.

J.MASCARENAS: I just have my monthly report and the updated vacancy list and unfortunately there’s not really much change. We may fill some positions in departments but then we lose a couple in other departments so it evens out.

DEZALIA: Right. Anything for Jen?

WINEMILLER: Jen, can you just tell us where do we advertise these positions?

J. MASCARENAS: Well, they go to all the schools, the towns, we post them on our Facebook page. We have like a mailing list of colleges, North Country things like that where they go so a bunch of different places. Anywhere we can get it out there really.

WINEMILLER: Thank you.

HUGHES: Just a quick question on job fairs in the area, is your department planning on participating? I don’t know which ones are out there?

J. MASCARENAS: I know. We have a list.

MASCARENAS: The last department head meeting I gave all departments a list and talked to them about which ones they should attend, what they should target. I think we’re getting a little better at targeting specific venues. There was one at Plattsburgh State, what was that? Two, three weeks ago. Personnel was at that. DSS was at that and I think we got some good applicants from that or at least some people that were interested. A lot on the seasonal employment but we’re doing a little better let’s say that, we’re certainly, we’re doing a little bit better getting the word out and our departments are actively participating in their own recruitment where they weren’t before, to me, they are the best advocates to do that work and I think they are doing a little bit better job with that.

HUGHES: One more just quick follow up based on what Davina just asked and what you just mentioned do we have anywhere where the applicant identifies where they heard of us?

J. MASCARENAS: No we were going to change the application so we could track that so I think that is something we are working on changing.

HUGHES: I think it is some good data.

MASCARENAS: It absolutely needs to change on our application. Mr. Palmer was proficient in WordPerfect and he did all of the documents when he was Personnel Officer on WordPerfect which anybody –

HUGHES: There’s no judgement there

MASCARENAS: It doesn’t convert well.

HUGHES: Correct.

MASCARENAS: So getting the ability to retype a lot of those documents and make the necessary changes is on our list and we do need to do that.

WINEMILLER: Just as a follow up, do you any type of newspaper advertisement?

J. MASCARENAS: We have done newspaper advertisements but we find that we don’t typically get a lot of hits from there and it’s costly for the department.

WINEMILLER: Sure and then just one last thing, do you have, speaking of flyers do you have a flyer with just some general information that we can all post on our Facebook pages to introduce folks to Essex County Personnel?

J. MASCARENAS: Sure, we have all kinds of flyers.

MASCARENAS: We do and we should make it a regular occurrence to put those things out. We have flyers of what our benefit packages are and what those things are. Just most recently and we’ll get this out to the board Jim and Erica while I was gone last week, did the Earn & Learn flyer. Jim got it out for me but who did it was Holly I think did a lot of the design work on that and she did a really nice job but that was the one task I gave Jim before I left I said, I need that to get out and he made sure he got it out to 38,000 people pretty quickly and efficiently but they have specific targets, it went to schools and social media those types of things targeting the individuals we are looking to get for those jobs. So we’re doing better at even that marketing piece where we weren’t always great at that. Have you seen that flyer or is Ken the only one that has seen it?

DEZALIA: It was in the mailboxes.

MASCARENAS: Oh, it was in the box okay, yeah great. So you can see we are even improving there a little bit.

DEZALIA: Can we get the digital copy of that too, to be able to upload and also some of the other flyers that you mentioned just emailed them to us?

J. MASACARENA: Yes.

DEZALIA: Anything else for Jen? No, thank you. Alright, next Judy Garrison.

GARRISON: Good morning. I submitted my monthly report and I do not have anything in addition to that unless anyone has any questions for me?

DEZALIA: Questions for Judy? No, okay thank you Judy. And I would assume Dan has nothing for the committee and next we will have JoePete he has submitted the summary report and recommendations for the recruitment and retention task force. Go ahead JoePete.

WILSON: Thank you and I want to thank everybody who has spent so much time so this is the final recommendations report and recommendations that we’d like to submit to this committee to review and hopefully adopt at the next meeting so then we can forward it onto the full board. We wrapped up our meetings of the task force and this is the result and one of the key components of this is turning over this work of recruitment and retention to a permanent home which would be the Personnel committee because that does bring together Personnel, the County Attorney, the County Manager and it will allow us a formal avenue to keep track of the big picture right down through the details. So what I would ask is please take time to review this, let me know if you have questions, concerns at our next Personnel committee meeting I would like to hopefully adopt this and move it along to the full board so if you have any questions right now I’d be happy to hear them but if not, please channel your questions to me via email or give me a call. Any questions?

HUGHES: Is there any chance of moving this today?

WILSON: If board members are comfortable with that I think that would be great. If you want to make that motion?

HUGHES: I’ll make that motion.

WILSON: And I’ll second it.

RESOLUTION APPROVING THE SUMMARY REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE RECRUITMENT & RETENTION TASK FORCE SUBMITTED ON 4/17/2023. Hughes, Wilson

SCOZZAFAVA: The only concern and by the way it’s great and I know how hard you worked on this but the one concern I have is a bonus for employees that recruit new employees that come in. I’m not even sure that is legal?

MASCARENAS: That was something Tom –

DEZALIA: Yeah, I believe we approved that

MASCARENAS: You approved as the board under Dan Palmer.

SCOZZAFAVA: It’s already in there?

MASCARENAS: It was an employee referral program that and you adopted the rules of that program and we’ve had – I can get you the numbers from Jen of the number of people. I think Steve McNally actually brought it as an idea of employees referring other employees and the board adopted that last year.

McNALLY: Did you get any?

MASCARENAS: Yeah. Jen, what would you say? Less than ten maybe at this point, not a lot but I think –

McNALLY: It helps.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, every little bit helps.

WILSON: Ten is a good number, yes.

SCOZZAFAVA: How much was the bonus?

MASCARENAS: It’s paid out in what two separate installments Jen? Yeah, so if the employee stays x amount of time they get that initial fee and if they stay past, what is it a year? They get the second installment at the year mark. I can send you the specifics on it Tom.

SCOZZAFAVA: Okay.

DEZALIA: The only thing I would like to maybe add to is maybe Jen and Mike and I could have a quick meeting before the next so we just know where we are headed toward.

MASCARENAS: We can do that.

HUGHES: I just had a question. Terri Morse had some ideas.

WILSON: And I worked with her on those.

HUGHES: Great, thank you.

DEZALIA: Was that the ideas about the department head stuff?

WILSON: Yes.

DEZALIA: Okay so we have a mover and second anything further? All in favor, so moved.

WILSON: Thank you everybody. Thank you so many people worked on this and a lot of them are not hear but we got a lot of great effort out of department heads and union reps and staff members at lots of different levels to do this so thank you very much.

DEZALIA: Okay thank you JoePete. Anything else to come before the Personnel committee? No, okay we are adjourned.

As there was no further discussion to come before this Personnel Committee it was adjourned at 10:45 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors