Board considers revisions to City’s employee handbook

By Randy Bell

The Clinton Board of Aldermen spent its entire work session April 3 discussing proposed revisions to the City employee handbook. Yet, there still seems to be no consensus on how detailed the new guidelines need to be. The Board has been looking at a range of topics related to City employees, including a residency requirement, dress code, nepotism policy, outside employment and a possible switch to a General Schedule (GS) payscale.

Alderwoman-at-Large Ricki Garrett has been pushing for the revisions, saying they’re long overdue.

“We started looking at updating it, because there were places throughout the personnel policy that said the Mayor could hire or fire, that a department head could hire or fire,” Garrett said. “And, of course, that’s not true. Only the Board can take those actions. We really started looking at it to make those changes but then realized it hadn’t been updated since 2012.”
And that’s what prompted a line-by-line review of the handbook.

“I had actually started looking at it with the help of former alderman Dave Ellis,” said Garrett. “He and I had started going through it, just to see what parts of it needed to be significantly updated. So, we created a draft, which I then shared with the Board and the Mayor. And then a decision was made to allow an attorney with expertise in human resources to look at it, too. So, he created another document.”

That makes three options for the Board to consider: the current handbook, Garrett’s proposal and the attorney’s version, which Garrett believes is too vague.

“It really provided, I thought, too much leeway and not enough specific direction,” she said. “I don’t think any of the Board wants to micro-manage the department heads; but, I think, to some extent, it helps the department heads if they have something black-and-white that they can show to the employee and say, ‘this is not allowed,’ or ‘this is allowed’. So, I think it helps them in the long run.”

Ward 3 Alderman Robert Chapman says revising the employee handbook may not be the City’s most pressing need, but it’s worth the effort to consider possible changes for the first time in over a decade.

“The world is a very different place eleven years since the last time it was revisited,” Chapman said. “I think it’s smart to revisit it for the City’s sake.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The General Schedule (GS) payscale is the federal government payscale used to determine the salaries of over seventy percent of federal civilian employees. An employee’s base pay depends on the GS Paygrade of their job and the Paygrade Step they have achieved (depending on seniority or performance). For more information about the GS payscale, visit FederalPay.org.