ORDER-2021-69 : Authorizing the Creation of a Public Hiring Process for the Melrose City Clerk & A Performance Evaluation Process for Council-Appointed Positions Pursuant to Section 2- 8 of the City Charter

Transcript (~36 min @ 2:54:55)

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▶ 2:54:52 Jeff McNaught: Thank you madam clerk chief. I believe we're. We're gonna let you go for the evening. Great. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for all you do and the whole department.

▶ 2:55:07 Jeff McNaught: Thank you. I'll pass that on. Okay. Next we have order 2021 dash 69. An order authorizing the creation of a public hearing hiring process for the city clerk and a performance evaluation process for council Appointment positions pursuant to section 2 dash 8 of the city charter.

▶ 2:55:39 Christopher Cinella: counselors uh president senella sorry yeah um i just want to say i think uh this this order pretty much speaks for itself um should it pass uh tonight's committee and then subsequently full council and i'll be sending out an email as to serving on the higher committee thank you

▶ 2:56:05 Speaker 8: um anyone else have their hand up seeing none uh council Garipay um yeah through through the chair

▶ 2:56:14 Mark Garipay: to the uh for the makers of the order i'm just curious is this um what what is the intent i know we have i know it says in the charter we have to do this uh every um appointment every three years but is the intent to open it up um every three years uh the position um to open it up for new hires or is it uh for reappointment what's what's going to be the intent going forward just to be clear especially if we're going to be putting this out and um having people apply i think it should be pretty much clear cut on that president sanella yeah i think that uh

▶ 2:56:55 Christopher Cinella: the intent is to establish a process you know going forward as it stated in the um order itself most of us on this council we're not a part of the process to begin with so this gives us an opportunity and plus the stated section 2a it's pretty clearly spelled out that the City Council shall elect a city clerk to to serve her a term of three years. It doesn't say may, could, it's shall, meaning must.

▶ 2:57:36 Jeff McNaught: That answers your question. Council Gaffney, does that answer your question?

▶ 2:57:40 Mark Garipay: Yes. I guess just some clarification on shall a point, but is that opening it up for application for a whole new hiring process, or is it um shall shall kind of renew i guess i mean it's just just to be clear it's a shell elect

▶ 2:58:01 Jeff McNaught: and and it's for an appointment of three years that's what the section says so it's must elect just for everyone's clarification okay thanks counselor thomas

▶ 2:58:25 Cory Thomas: Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the makers of the order, is this – I apologize. I'm going to

▶ 2:58:39 Cory Thomas: forget my time for a second. Thank you.

▶ 2:58:42 Jeff McNaught: Councilor Grigoraitis?

▶ 2:58:45 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Attorney McNaught. I just wanted to respond to the chair. Councilor Garipay earlier question is one of the makers of the order. I think the future intent of the council Council is in the hands of future Council. I don't, I wouldn't ever want to say how a future body should go about its obligations under the Charter. So I think this is my interpretation and Councilor Snell's interpretation of how this body, given who constitutes it, our history as newly, mostly newly elected Councilors, and in all honesty, inheriting staff for whom there's been no formal performance evaluation process and i'm happy to know that the city is moving forward with that how we proceed with what is currently before us from a timeline perspective

▶ 2:59:39 Shawn M. MacMaster: so i hope that helps council mcmaster thank you mr chairman in in looking at the uh charter uh it says that the city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years period I think 1 of the challenges here is that that seems to have been interpreted a certain way by prior councils, which creates some precedent for us. Right? Or wrong. I do think what also concerns me is that it's also clear that under the charter, there are 2 positions in city government that fall under the purview of the city council that being the city clerk. And that being the clerk of committees, it's clear in the charter that the clerk of committee serves at the pleasure of the council that speaks for itself. The clerk does not speak, or excuse me, the clerk does not serve at the pleasure of the council. And I think the charter says there shall be an election. i think what's critical is it doesn't say the city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years comma subject to reappointment every three years it says shall elect elections by nature of what they are meant to be periodic whether it's a public office whether it's a corporate board of directors whether it's a non-profit board of directors a professional association elections occur periodically and the charter is is very clear like it or not we didn't offer the charter it's the the constitution of melrose that's how we need to look at it it is uh law and we're bound by it um and again regardless of how it's been interpreted i do think it's incumbent upon us to have some processes in place there are no processes for the two employees who fall under the purview of the city council uh when i say employees i don't mean individuals i mean the positions um and i do think it's our responsibility i think it'd be a dereliction of duty if we don't establish some processes to ensure that an election every three years means something whatever that is uh but without um processes that are defined without parameters um we are left in this difficult position that we're in uh right now so i do think with nine new members and i you know myself and council of chairman toesy were involved uh in um the uh the election uh of the clerk a few years ago speaking for myself i was relatively new i was only on for a couple of years so i understand what um the position that everyone else finds himself in right now and i do commend the makers of the order for trying to establish a process by which uh we'll be you know better off in future councils will be better off uh with some concrete definitions in place

▶ 3:02:33 Jeff McNaught: moving forward thank you mr chairman thank you council mcmaster i believe councillor stewart

▶ 3:02:38 Robb Stewart: had his hand up next is that correct i did mr chair thank you very much um in reading the language of uh this order um when i read about the job posting broadly disseminated I'd like to understand who controls that and what the anticipated costs of that are going to be. That's a fairly loose interpretation of trying to go and find individuals across, I think, justifiably a diverse range of candidates. So, that's that's 1 area that I did not feel comfortable with, and I would look for a little bit of clarification. To echo counselor. McMaster's point Mr chair. I also do believe that. It would make a little bit more clear from my perspective as well. To understand what that process is, if it's at the pleasure of the council, or if it's not, and who's involved in this decision making process. And how does that happen? It's not quite clear. So it would help for me as well. In terms of clarity. Thank you. Mr. chair.

▶ 3:04:08 Jeff McNaught: Thank you Councilor Stewart, Councilor Thomas.

▶ 3:04:16 Cory Thomas: Thank you Mr. Chair. I apologize for my train of thought earlier. It's been a long meeting and I've been failing on the web in the last couple of days. Councilor Stewart just asked the same question I had. Who will make up the hiring process? There'll be a subcommittee and if we can get some more information for the people at home, what the process will look like and who will be part of the subcommittee

▶ 3:04:46 Christopher Cinella: that will be reviewing applications. President Cinella. Yes, so again, should this pass committee and pass full council, I will be putting together that committee. The President can put this forward unilaterally. I decided that, you know, as a group we should deliberate on it. but in the past which you know going back i believe to when mary rita had left president khan i believe sent out a memo um stipulating this process so that helps um through the chair

▶ 3:05:28 Cory Thomas: uh i mean there there's no guarantee though i mean we've referenced um you know none of us to go apart other than councilors mcmaster and tramitose we're part of the hiring process for our current clerk um with city elections now um facing us in 2021 you know there's no guarantee that always will be back um to hire the next clerk um so i i don't know i i i'm weighing

▶ 3:06:03 Jeff McNaught: options on this order as we speak thank you uh counselor mcmaster uh just a point of information

▶ 3:06:07 Shawn M. MacMaster: to offer some clarity on the former process. The President at that time, I believe, was, correct me if I'm wrong, Councilor Tramontozzi, I believe it was Councilor Zwirko, and there was a committee established under Rule 25 in which the President Appointment a subcommittee of uh counselors uh who um essentially um looked at candidates and made a recommendation to uh the full council uh if i'm wrong consulate chairman josie feel free to jump in but that was my memories there was a subcommittee established under rule 25. can i can

▶ 3:07:02 John N. Tramontozzi: Can I catch up? Yes, through the maker of the motion. Yeah, that is correct. Counselor McMaster is correct. When we were on the search committee for the replacement for the city councilor, as well as the clicker committees, the president did appoint a subcommittee. A matter of fact, I was 1 of the counselors Appointment on the subcommittee for reviewing the candidates for the clerk of committees and what the process entailed was. We would interview, let me let me stop by saying that the HR director. would post the uh the position uh that the hr uh director would accumulate the resumes um and then submit them to the subcommittee that was Appointment by the president of the counselor we would then have an interview process and we then after interviewing the candidates would bring the recommendation to the full council for a vote the full council would have the we would have the recommendation but the full council would be advised as to who was applying so they mean they could you know go go beyond the recommendation or against the recommendation of the subcommittee but but yeah that's the process was done that way now granted probably informal in the sense it's uh there's nothing in the charter that uh specifically spells it out but we took it i think the president took it upon himself to uh to make that subcommittee so that we could review the candidates since we're going to be hiring that candidate uh but we did recognize the fact that you we need the support of the administration specifically the hr department to coordinate the interview the hiring process by submitting and collecting resumes and so forth so I think this order is intended to kind of put in formal writing if you will the what has been historically the intent of the council we haven't had the need to go through a hiring process because our fort prop the city clerk prior to the current clerk was there for many many years and it was a situation where the city clerk was still active in that position and maintained uh the desire to stay in that position so we sort of uh just uh granted or renewed the position

▶ 3:10:01 John N. Tramontozzi: but there's nothing prohibiting us from opening up the process to eligible candidates for future election so i think again this this intent is an attempt to be transparent about our selection process is to go through this process um allow the current clerk to submit the resume to be rehired if you will but open it up to other candidates if you know if we wanted to review other candidates resumes and so forth so I hope that helps that that's what we did in the past and again it was it may have been informal but it worked it worked and we were able to review candidates for the positions of clerk and clerk of committees but I'm happy to answer any

▶ 3:10:59 John N. Tramontozzi: questions about the process that we uh encountered in the past does anyone have any other questions

▶ 3:11:13 Jeff McNaught: for council chairman tozy any other questions comments anything at all council Grigoraitis

▶ 3:11:20 Jen Grigoraitis: thank you chairman mcnaught just through the chair i wanted to respond to councillor Stewart’s question regarding the language about broadly disseminate um i think as it's come up in this body with other orders related to hiring and job postings for the city there's certainly been conversations with hr who does oversee that process we would be relying on them about doing a more expansive approach to hiring i think what has typically happened is my understanding is that we would post to mma maintains a hiring database into the city website and that would be the extent of our dissemination and i know some of the conversation around the hiring the hr director position was about expanding where we're posting job positions to broaden the candidate pool and i know that's something this lata has been very um open to and committed to so that was the intent was to sort of state our commitment to ensuring that as we go forward and try to have an open and transparent process that we're disseminating the opportunity to be the clerk of the city of melrose as broadly as possible

▶ 3:12:30 Jeff McNaught: i hope that helps thank you thank you council Grigoraitis counselor stewart thank you mr chair

▶ 3:12:41 Robb Stewart: the other part that is a little confusing to me is it sounds like a traditional hiring process when you involve the hr department but then there's this whole elected component which seems contrary to a traditional hiring process a higher hiring is based on merit uh it's based on experience but then are you suggesting through this order that then once someone is selected then there's a committee that gets to vote and then it comes to the full council and then we vote again for that that's that's where i'm trying to understand what this process is and to me it's it's a little bit contrary to this kind of a position, I would think. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

▶ 3:13:45 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Councilor Grigoraitis.

▶ 3:13:48 Jen Grigoraitis: Thank you, Chairman McDowell, through the Chair. So, by charter, these two positions are Appointment by the City Council. So, there is this coming April, which is, to Councilor Thomas earlier question, question which is when the term of city clerk is up for the three-year um appointment this body will have to go through an election of the counselors for whomever is the city clerk and i certainly invite counselors tram and tozy or mcmaster to correct me from their um experience but that is the the election piece is the fact that this is an Appointment position that reports to the council and this body the way we hire someone for lack of a better term is to hold an election um amongst ourselves so that is why there i mean that language comes from the charter as kind of awkward as it feels and as awkward as it is to probably have 11 people be your boss um

▶ 3:14:51 Jeff McNaught: that is how it is written in the charter thank you counselor tramantosi

▶ 3:14:55 John N. Tramontozzi: Yes, just thank you that just to follow up on that point by counselor. Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting that the chat talks about election as opposed to appointment. The administration may may appoint department heads and appoint employees, but because there's a recognition in the chatter that the clerk and the clerk of committee serve. The city council, then it's the city council as a body. Has to make that appointment if you will, the way to do that is the election process. So it's the term may be awkward, but we are pointing that that person into that position. But the proper way of the appointment by the city council is to have an election. So the, the, the. Um, subcommittee, the purpose of the subcommittee is to review the candidates for the benefit of the council as a whole. When it comes up when they comes up for the election. Can you imagine how us as a body having to interview the collection of 1015? Um, you know, resumes, it just makes sense in the hiring process, streamlined for the subcommittee Appointment by the president. Of the council to make the recommendations to the full board. And then the full board can then vote and we don't necessarily bring back just 1 candidate. We might have. Uh, 2 or 3 or 4 candidates for which the city council will review and then have a final vote on that. Makes sense.

▶ 3:16:55 Speaker 9: So, thank you.

▶ 3:17:01 Mark Garipay: Counselor. Yeah, through the, through the chair, the council, just a quick question. When you talked about the process in the past. um and you people ask or candidates have been brought forward has that been on open open

▶ 3:17:24 John N. Tramontozzi: open seats or re-appointments if i'm a good point um the only reason that the the only time uh since i've been on the board that there was need for a subcommittee if you you will, was for an open seat. In the past, the position was a reappointment, and we just had to change the vote on the reappointment. It was handled. I'm not saying that that's necessarily the proper way of doing it. Put it up to candidates every three years or when the vote needs to be taking place. But I think at the time, the city council was happy, if you will, with the appointments and felt that re-appointment was all that was required. There was standing in the council that the reappointment of the persons in that position would be done without the need to look at other candidates. So, you know, that that's just the way it was handled in the past. And again, they were the individuals in those positions in the past for a long term. Then the retirement retirements resulted in the position, the positions being open, and now we needed to figure out a way of filling the position. and it was the what we're talking about through this order this process so so just a quick

▶ 3:19:09 Mark Garipay: question when when we move this or maybe to the makers of the order when we leave this floor with

▶ 3:19:19 Mark Garipay: uh and we we um advertise a potentially advertised job if this was to pass is it going to say it's a three-year appointment or three-year contract is that going to be spelled out in the uh in the job description or um in the uh in the application if i may i think i think that's a

▶ 3:19:42 John N. Tramontozzi: given i mean the charter spells out the terms of the of the position so the uh the person who um is hired for that position uh i think it's presumed that there may be limitations on um on their employment and that there may and there would there may be the opportunity for a reassessment uh and that's that's left with the uh the city council i i i understand that i

▶ 3:20:13 Mark Garipay: just not sure if everyone before they apply for a position is going to read the city charter um so

▶ 3:20:28 Leila Migliorelli: councilman Migliorelli i believe you had a hand up yes thank you chairman i i think the issue for me here is just the the lack of clarity with the charter um there's just one sentence in there that just talks about you know shall elect a city clerk to a term of three years with the zero context of how that works um to the makers of the order can you maybe just for explain for the public how changing the charter how problematic that would be and then i know that someone had alluded to earlier on is this going to be the method to be used to for reappointments or re-elections moving forward and is there a way to codify that um to council gary pay's point like so that every time someone's um elected Appointment to this position that they understand what the process is going forward every three three years council gregor Grigoraitis since you had your hand

▶ 3:21:18 Jeff McNaught: up next i'll give you the opportunity to try and respond if you don't want to we can go to president sanella she she asked for the makers of the order um through the chair i was going

▶ 3:21:31 Jen Grigoraitis: to respond to councilor carapay about the job description i think a couple of things the the supervision of these two positions falls to the president of the city council um so any edits to those job descriptions i believe would be within the purview of the president of the council um from an employment law perspective in massachusetts you're either an at-will employee whether you're Appointment or not or you're a union employee so there's no nobody's under a contract that's um so even if you're there's an appointment this is very common in government i know i've had to reapply for my job my boss reapplies for his job every three years in a public reappointment process um i think it's in the world of government this is what often happens um but i think i agree with you i think it's something that needs to be better clarified we can't assume that people are going to read the city charter i don't know if it's clear now that this is an Appointment position that's responsive that responds to an elected body of 11 people which to counselor Thomas point can change every two years who the makeup of that body is which is certainly complex and i think any candidate should understand that that's the structure that they're walking into um so i'll and then i'll defer to counselor senella for counselor Migliorelli's

▶ 3:23:00 Christopher Cinella: question if that's okay president yeah as far as the uh charter change goes i mean i would defer to counselor tramitosi who's probably been around for that process i think it's every 10 years correct me if i'm wrong so as far as that goes yes the next council in three years could very well be back in this the same position unless

▶ 3:23:32 Jeff McNaught: the charter has changed and i believe we had councilor mcmaster

▶ 3:23:36 Shawn M. MacMaster: next thank you mr chairman uh into consular rigoritis's uh point and she's she's right i've been through um uh working as a public employee my entire career the same type of process uh where i've had to reapply for my job when there's been a new administration been through multiple administrations over my 20 plus career in government and as public employees um that is one of the risks um we assume is that a job is not uh forever uh short of being a supreme court justice this is no forever jobs uh in government whether it's uh local government state government or uh the federal government so i think there through this um whatever process uh we may put in place if this does pass uh we can um establish that and you know uh make it clear through some sort of a disclaimer just in the interest of public disclosure but i do think that most people who apply for a public job uh do so without that understanding and risk uh in mind um and i i i think it's important too we've also talked about you know we've gone back and forth and we've said election and reappointment and i think some of us are using the terms interchangeably um i think we really have to think about what the intent of um the authors of the uh the charter were and um the you know short of there being a record the best way to do that is to actually look at the language and see what's there and see what's not there and again this says the city council shall elect a city clerk to serve for a term of three years elections as i said earlier are periodic. If the purpose of this or the intent was for it to be a reappointment it would say comma subject to reappointment every three years. So I think we have to define what does an election mean and let's just play this out practically. If we didn't have an election and let's assume this was meant to be a reappointment and uh the clerk came before us and the clerk didn't get the requisite six votes well what happens then we don't have a city clerk because there's no process in place the so what we i think need to do is ensure that there's a process attached to the word election in order for there to uh be an election there needs to be some sort of solicitation of candidates and the only way you have a solicitation of candidates is if there's a process that process doesn't exist now um and again there's some precedent here which i would would argue is not uh right in that this has been viewed as a reappointment uh every three years again like it or not we are the current council we have to think about what's in the best interests of this council in the city moving forward and if we have two positions that fall into the purview of the council and there's no process in place i think we're doing a disservice to ourselves and a disservice to the public and frankly a disservice to the two employees who deserve to have a performance review process and who deserve to know what it means when they fall into the purview of the of the council so again i would i would just argue that this is never meant to be a reappointment a reappointment then would either mean at some point in time we run the risk of not having a clerk if the clerk doesn't get the requisite six votes uh or uh it means it's a lifetime appointment and that would be rather extraordinary for there to be a lifetime appointment in city government it would be you know there's no other position in city government that would be a lifetime position uh the the two chiefs the police chief and the fire chief fall under the the mayor uh there's a contractual every other department head uh is nominated by the mayor comes before us uh we appoint but they serve with the pleasure of the of the mayor so um again i think uh we are left to interpret this like it or not and i think the responsible thing to do is is to um come up with some uh guidelines uh that will govern this council in future councils going forward and it's for that reason that i plan to support the order thank you mr chair thank you council mcmaster uh

▶ 3:27:55 Jeff McNaught: anyone else i believe we've gotten almost everyone for the first time but maybe not two people that i'm counting is there anyone else for the first time even though we've been on three and four for for others but certainly a topic worth discussion so is there any other discussion on this matter so we have a

▶ 3:28:32 Jeff McNaught: motion for motion to recommend passage by President Sinella seconded by

▶ 3:28:49 Robb Stewart: Councillor Grigoraitis no discussion Councillor Stewart yeah Mr. chair I I just wanted to make the one point for that I I guess I just get a little hung up on the language when they talk about the hiring process and then we talk about appointment and election and maybe it's semantics and I just need to get through it but uh that's where it's confusing to me and if it's confusing to me it might be confusing um so i'll leave it at that um with that i'm going to pursue

▶ 3:29:21 Jeff McNaught: the discussion any further discussion seeing none madam clerk will you please call the role

▶ 3:29:38 Speaker 1: Chair Mcnaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councilor Tannen-Tilson? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Nay. Councilor

▶ 3:29:44 Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No.

▶ 3:29:59 Speaker 1: Melody. Yeah, no, yes.

▶ 3:30:05 Speaker 1: No, yes.

▶ 3:30:13 Jeff McNaught: motion passes um seeing that there is no further business on our agenda this evening i'll entertain

▶ 3:30:22 Jeff McNaught: a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second motion adjourned by councillor stewart seconded by councillor Garipay madam clerk can you please call the roll yes yes yes yes