4.1. ERMUSR 05-12-2009 - Laserfiche WebLink

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typically commercial accounts, but sometimes a specific or special need of a residential customer may require that immediate response as well. Many of these after-hours trips are billable to the customer. Currently there are approximately 700 security accounts. Of these there are 230 that are outside of the City of Elk River. That is one-third of the security accounts that are not within the City of Elk River. (Refer to the attached list of cities with ERMU security accounts that are outside of the City of Elk River). Because of this, the probability of extending the response time by traveling to the plant first and then deploying to the source of the call is even higher. That directly impacts customer service because of the increase in response time for what is obviously a critical after-hours calls. In order for the Utilities to maintain the level of customer service that has been sold to our security customers, there needs to be a security technician on-call after- hours. And in order for the Security Technician to be able to respond in the few critical after- hours emergencies, the Security Technician needs to be equipped to do so. To provide that level of customer service, the Security Technician needs to be equipped with atake-home vehicle. Another aspect to eliminating on-call for some or all the current on-call employees is the impact to employee morale. After a tumultuous year of change and uncertainty for the Utilities, the employees had finally started to move on and unite in a common goal again. That is, until recently when talk of reduced work hours and 0% cost of living increase brought employee morale crashing to an all-time low. In the eyes of the employees, eliminating on-call and take- home vehicles is just one more thing under attack, disrupting the focus of the company from providing safe and reliable services to our ratepayers. Also, there is the benefit to the employee that is attached to the on-call and take-home vehicles. Specifically to the Security Technician, this employee was hired with 24/7/365 on-call and atake-home vehicle as part of the hiring negotiations. These are typical within the security industry and are offered by ERMU's competitors for similar jobs. This is true for management as well. Take-home vehicles are typical for management at municipals, coops, and utility engineering consultant firms. Eliminating this benefit creates a competitive disadvantage to attract and retain top talent. If even one ERMU employee affected by the elimination of on-call or take-home vehicle were to leave, the cost to the company to rehire, train, and assimilate into the Utilities would greatly exceed any savings from eliminating this practices. As discussed at the April Commission meeting, the cost, depending on the assumptions made, of the on-call take-home vehicles could fall within the range of $6000 to $10000 per year. Either way, this is only 0.0002% of the budget. But the cost of the negative impact to morale and employee retention could greatly exceed that. A 0.0002% budget savings given back to the ratepayers as negative PCA credit would not be noticeable. A reduction in customer service and a reduction in the Utilities ability to provide safe reliable utilities could be noticed. It becomes a matter of public perception. The bottom line is that the Utilities' employees want to do the best job they can and pride themselves on their workmanship and sense of ownership in the system. The employees need to be provided with the training and equipment required to supply the ratepayers with the highest level of customer service providing safe and reliable utilities. Part of this is the on-call emergency preparedness. And a critical part of emergency preparedness is the take-home vehicles. This is important to the employees and to the customers. As previously stated, the value to the Utilities in the 0.0002% of the budget allocated for on-call take-home vehicles is found in the intangibles and not in the frequency of call-outs. This is Utilities' added ability to better service their customers through emergency preparedness and quick response time.