Travis County Commissioners Court
July 26, 2005
Item 9
Take appropriate action and request to conduct an abbreviated market salary survey for two job families, facilities equipment, road and general maintenance and, b, technical and skilled trades.
>> yes. Alicia, executive manager for administrative operations. We can put this back on the agenda for two purposes agenda for two purposes one, the county attorney had concerns about last week's posting, so we reposted for that. Secondly is we wanted to make clear to the Commissioner's court, we wanted to make clear the intent of the Commissioner's court's, rather, to look at all of the jobs in the two job families or we -- would you -- or we made a list of -- yeah -- of an alternate option one which would only address the job titles in those -- the two families that we discussed last week that were related in any way in terms of compensation, structure or matching. And that is a much shorter list than the one you have in your backup.
>> does that get the parks...
>> yes.
>> I mean within the family?
>> yes. This doesn't mean I don't love the other people but it got way beyond the scope of the concerns that we heard during the hearing.
>> so we can look at all of the jobs in the two job families which you have that at your backup or this is alternate option one which includes...
>> stuff that we were going to outsource, I think. The. -- tnr's.
>> yes.
>> the question came how was -- it was in house, I guess, but part of the deal was how would you guys be able to face yours? That is part of the question. I still don't really understand the outsources now includes which -- I guess what bothers me, though, is there was another -- there was another deal ahead of this one, and -- and with the administrative family that was ahead of this, and we -- we include this, it will become ahead of the administrative family that was before any of it, but the court I think decided, I mean from what I was hearing, was looking at the outsourcing aspect for joe geezerman, now I’m going to figure out how did this get in and especially ahead of the administrative family, you said, well, we're going to bump that over to '06 instead of '05, because you said you didn't have enough time. It's kind of confusing to me.
>> one of the things I think you do want to look at some of these jobs before others is a high turnover that you heard from -- from staff, for example, the equipment operator has one of the highest turnovers in all of Travis County. Secondly is that we did talk about the possibility of outsourcing or having folks that we have worked with in the past and using some training money and then joe has also offered to fund some of the people that we have that we've used in the past to bring us on board to help us get through this.
>> nothing else was talked about, I guess, except the heavy equipment operator that came down here in the public hearing. They were all tnr persons, so we were trying to get a fix on that and I thought we had remedied, and I guess what I’m saying is we're going to [inaudible] the persons in that family, why not bring the administrative persons in that was before any of this. I don't understand that.
>> the reason that we have looked at these other positions is because there is a relationship to the equipment operator either through matching or they're part of the same job family, and because of the high turnover that you have in those particular groups, it was determined that we would do an abbreviated market salary survey to try to address the turnover.
>> we did say we had these jobs last week, the problem is we were not posted these.
>> yes, sir.
>> we were posted for the -- for tnr, and then when alicia brought it to our attention and looked like they would be able to get together, tnr sought a consultant to get it done which would not adversely affect the ability to do the families we approved which includes the administrative families, I guess, the administrative families includes how many jobs it's 700 jobs, whereas we were looking at an abbreviated market salary survey that included a much smaller number that we would hire outside consultant assistants to get done during this budget process is what I thought.
>> yes, that's correct.
>> and last week we discussed that we would -- this would not affect our schedule for doing the administrative family. So as long as we do -- as long as we contract it out, with minimum internal assistance, then I think we get it done, right?
>> yes, sir.
>> and so --
>> yes, sir, but, see, last week we did not have alicia's part posted, so although we really approved it, it's back on the agenda to correct that problem.
>> much more would be...
>> yes.
>> much more of a narrow focus that really did define the jobs that really reflect what we heard in the employee's public hearing, while still respecting the fact that there are interconnected people between facilities, parks and our road maintenance folks, so I am much more comfortable with this list, the other one got way out there, includes all sorts of other departments and really was not the issue brought forward in in terms of being competitive using good people.
>> so these jobs would be in administrative operations and tnr.
>> yes, sir.
>> most of them are in tnr, aren't they?
>> but you're saying they're a match and they're really similar.
>> custodians?
>> yeah.
>> yeah.
>> like this, yes.
>> part of it is going to be outsourcing. That's what I’m trying to distinguish.
>> the only internal part is when you hire outside help you've got to tell them -- give them some idea of what to do for you.
>> it's a monitoring the contract, monitoring the work.
>> in terms of the market salary survey work, that's supposed to be done on the outside, and our internal people would just provide as much up front information --
>> the oversite, making it connected, but not nearly as if we were doing it ourselves, just like managing any other July 4th sourcing person -- outsourcing person. The bulk of the work we are consumed with is what they are doing.
>> if you'll take a motion, i'll move approval of allowing tnr and administrative opss to outsource what we're calling option one in terms of the list we need to get to melissa related to job families an staff input is to direct the contract, answer questions and to be the point of contact.
>> discussion? All in favor. That passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 7:49 AM