Council finalizes staff responsibilities

Completing the revision of the town employees' handbook this week, Moorcroft's attorney, Pat Carpenter, met with the council before the regular meeting for a workshop to refine responsibilities of the employee committee, council and department heads regarding disciplinary action and grievances.

Disciplinary action

Carpenter began by breaking the disciplinary actions into guaranteed tiers: what authority does the department head carry and where does this authority end?

Councilman Dale Petersen shared his thoughts that, "I think the supervisor should be able to deal with minor infractions. I don't think everything needs to come to that group of two [employee committee]. I think the coach, counseling and the writing up and the performance improving plan can all be the supervisor's job. If you're at the point where you have to do a reprimand, I think you should bring that to the committee."

However, Mayor Pro-Tem Ben Glenn voiced his thoughts on the need for the body to consider recommendations of suspension, demotion and termination from the employee committee.

"They should bring that before all of us," he said.

Petersen agreed, saying, "I just don't think two people should have the power to terminate, they can bring their findings and council makes the decision."

Grievances

Carpenter addressed the need for some type of procedure for an employee who believes themselves treated unjustly for whatever reason.

"We have a set of administrative steps they have to go through before they go filing a department waiver or a grievance. The whole point is that if we can deal with this in house then we should try to do so," he said.

Carpenter provided the council with a sample written procedure with which he was familiar for their consideration, but informed them that it was not the only procedural outline available.

He advised a form that can be requested by an employee after following initial procedural steps and chain of command to clarify the issue. The governing body agreed that this was a good idea, but advocated the need for chain of command; in this instance the need for the employee with the grievance to first address their department head, even if their issue is with said supervisor.

"Sometimes they don't know there is a problem," Glenn observed; a sentiment strongly shared by Petersen, who opined, "If I have a problem with my department head I should have the responsibility to go talk to him."

With clarification on updating these final details of the employee handbook, the workshop ended.