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At this time, I am prepared to recommend that all snow plowing activity on Saturday and <br />Sunday receive overtime pay and that this policy be for the 2002-03 snow season and that this <br />policy be evaluated within one year. This won't give the street employees what they requested, <br />but it will go a long ways toward providing fair compensation for hours worked under difficult <br />situations. This department is the only one where most of the employees need to be available <br />on weekends in the winter in case of a storm. They all understand that snow plowing is part of <br />the job but to be essentially on call during weekends without always being compensated at <br />time and one-half pay when actually called out does not seem fair. A section of the city policy <br />manual does allow for emergency call out hours (as determined by the department head) to be <br />compensated as overtime hours and an argument could be made that any snow plowing on <br />the weekend is an emergency call out. <br /> <br />With this proposed change for snow plowing hours on weekends, the economic impact to the <br />city for having vacation hours and sick hours not count towards hours worked is less <br />significant. If the City Council wants to consider any changes, it should be noted that the City <br />Council can move one or both of these type of work hours back to its pre December 20, <br />1999, status and have them count as hours worked for overtime purposes. Of the two types of <br />hours, sick hours would seem like the best candidate for consideration. <br /> <br />An informal survey was conducted by the Street/Park Department and the results indicate <br />that Elk River is in the minority of the sampled cities in not having vacation hours or sick <br />hours count towards hours worked. However, when looking at an employee pay and benefit <br />issue the entire package needs to be examined and not just one part of the package being <br />isolated and compared. Overall, I believe Elk River is in the normal range when it comes to <br />total pay and benefits when looking at similar communities. <br /> <br />The city had an insurance benefits committee that put forward a recommendation to the City <br />Council a year ago but this committee dealt only with insurance issues. The street employees <br />requested a committee to deal with wage and benefit concerns but this does not seem <br />appropriate, as wages and benefits is a management issue. The city personnel committee <br />(mainly deals with comparable worth issues) uses the Metro Area Stanton Report for data and <br />information when evaluating any Elk River employee wage and benefit issue. The DCA <br />Stanton Group report (the 2001 report was the 3Yd annual survey) contains data from 137 <br />governmental units on 106 different employee positions. A city staff conducted <br />comprehensive employee wage and benefit comparison would be a significant undertaking <br />and is not recommended at this time. <br /> <br />Recommendation <br />It is recommended that on a one-year trial basis that all employees working on snow removal <br />duties on Saturdays and Sundays be paid at overtime rates (time and one-half pay) and that <br />this policy be evaluated within one year. <br /> <br />s:\council\snowplowpolicychange.doc <br /> <br /> <br />