05-11-2020 Council Work Session Packet

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CITY OF ORONO MEMORANDUM DATE: May 11, 2020 TO: Mayor Walsh, City Council FROM: Dustin Rief, City Administrator RE: City Work Hours On January 27, 2020 work session council discussed city summer work hours primarily impacting city hall staff. City Hall’s normal hours are 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM (42.5 hours). At the work session the Council advised moving away from a summer hour’s format of 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Thursday and 7:30 AM to 11: 30 AM on Fridays (42 hours) to a scheduled open hours of 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM Monday through Thursday and 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM on Fridays (46.5 hours). Staff began tracking data under normal work hours with City Hall open in beginning February 24, 2020. The goal was to track resident/customer contacts for 6 weeks to better understand customer demand by days of the week. Part way through the tracking the COVID-19 emergency response went into effect changing many of the ways we do business including closing city hall and limiting contacts with residents. Further changes with school and daycare closures required flexibility of staffing for individual employees to accommodate childcare. Currently, we have administrative staff working as late as 10:00 or 11:00 PM and weekends to accommodate them filling their hours without these employees fully available during the entirety of the normal work hours hinders the ability to staff the expanded hours as originally guided. The preliminary data suggests staying open on Friday afternoons is a benefit to the residents. However, the expansion of hours beyond the regular hours under the existing uncertainties of COVID-19 may require compensatory or overtime in order to meet the expanded hours. The current conditions of staffing are as follows: 1 open position, and 4 staff working alternate hours (all exempt employees). This situation places the burden on a much smaller group of employees than during normal operations. Staff’s understanding of meeting the expectations of the expanded hours would require a minimum of 1 employee per department to be available during the originally guided expanded open hours for City Hall. If this expectation is applied under the current staffing situation to the employees on a per department basis, the employees meeting the full burden of the expanded hours are primarily hourly employees increasing the risk of unbudgeted overtime to meet the expectations of the expanded hours and consistency. The status of the current economy and potential for unbudgeted overtime would not be a prudent risk under the circumstances. I would propose to maintain the regular hours year around for consistency. Online and remote access to employees is the current operating procedure for City Hall and our community’s residents have more readily accepted our online options for services out of necessity due to COVID-19. Therefore, I would like to discuss maintaining City Hall hours at 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM year around to be consistent with the Police Department and for the residents. The change in hours is expected to begin May 17, 2020.