By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
The Virgin Valley Water District Board approved a series of changes to the district’s Personnel Policy during a meeting on Tuesday evening, Feb. 21. The changes updated and codified specifics in employee pay benefits including cost of living adjustments (COLA), annual leave, sick leave, and longevity pay.
VVWD General Manager Kevin Brown introduced the topic by reminding that the board had recently tasked staff to review these policies. This request was spurred by an item heard by the board in its Dec. 6, 2022 meeting, when the board approved a major 15 percent COLA for staff in order to make up for several years of no inflation adjustments to district wages and salaries. At that time, the board had requested staff to draft policies to better automate those adjustments and have them addressed each year rather than allowing it to get behind.
Brown said that he had assembled a committee made up of six staff members of different roles and at different seniorities with the district.
“They put together a pretty formative evaluation of other (utility district’s) policies throughout the region and then incorporated drafts of changes for your consideration tonight,” Brown said of this committee.
The first policy considered by the board was to establish a 2.5 percent default annual COLA. The policy also proposed that if the Consumer Price Index (CPI) were to change, above or below, 2.5 percent in a year, the matter would be brought to the board for further adjustments.
Board members expressed general approval of this proposal. Board President Ben Davis recalled that the reason the board was required to pass such a major cost of living increase last year was because the matter had not been dealt with on a regular basis.
“If we had been doing something that was just consistent, even if it didn’t exactly match the CPI every year, it would have gotten us to where we wanted to be,” Davis said. “I like this approach much better than what we’ve done in the past. It gives us a baseline for where we are going and hopefully avoids pitfalls that led us to being forced to do a big catch-up like last year.”
Board member Randy Laub made a motion to approve the COLA policy. It was adopted with a unanimous vote.
But there was less unanimity among the board for the following items regarding annual leave and sick pay.
The proposal increased the high end of vacation hours that can be earned per year to 200 for employees with more than 15 years of seniority and 240 hours for Department Head/Supervisor positions of same seniority. This was up from a flat 168 hours across all employees previously.
Employees would be allowed to accrue up to 240 hours of annual leave. Any hours accrued over that amount would be paid out at the end of the year. Provisions were also made for employees to cash out their leave hours at anytime during the year.
The proposal set sick leave accrual at 104 hours per year. Sick leave could be allowed to accrue to a maximum of 750 hours as of the end of each year. Any hours above that maximum accrual would be paid out at 50 percent of the employees regular hourly wage.
At separation from employment due to retirement, resignation, etc. employees would be paid for accrued sick leave at a percentage of hourly rate, detemined on a sliding scale in five year increments of years of service to the district. On the low end, employees serving at least six years would receive 50 percent. Those having served more than 26 years would receive 100 percent of the sick leave accrual.
Davis admitted that he was a bit overwhelmed by these proposed vacation and sick leave adjustments. “I’m struggling on these amounts,” he said. “I mean, I want us to be competitive. But I can tell you, I work for a private utility and I’ve never had more than two weeks of paid time off per year in my entire life.”
“As somebody who has been hiring people for 18 years now, I’ve never had anyone come in and start with, ‘Well, how much sick leave do I get?’” Davis added. “To me, where we need to make sure that we are on par with everybody else is on the pay per hour. That is what people are most worried about.”
But Laub pointed out that the proposal was in line with other public entities in the area. “This is basically almost verbatim what the city (of Mesquite) has in place for its employees,” Laub said. “If we are going to keep up with other utilities that are similar to us, then this is what it is. It is pretty black and white to me.”
Davis said that there were downsides with adopting the City as the yardstick on these things. “The city has a union that negotiates on their behalf for employees,” he said. “So by us trying to match the city, guess who we are negotiating with: the city’s union and ourselves. And we are not necessarily representing our ratepayers by doing that.”
Board member Gary Elgort sympathized with Davis’ shock at the numbers. He said that he had worked his entire career for a public utility in New York and never seen numbers like this. But he added that these were the benefits that are customary in today’s environment. The district had to keep up with them to retain its valuable employees, he said.
“I think that is how we look out for our ratepayers,” Elgort said. “If we don’t have long-term, competent, quality employees, we will fail at our mission to provide one of the most important things for the people of this valley. This proposal ensures that moving forward we will keep quality people working here.”
Elgort made a motion to approve the vacation leave item and Laub made the motion to approve the sick leave policy. Both motions passed with a 3-1 vote. Davis was the lone dissenting vote. Board member Rich Bowler was absent from the meeting.
The proposal also made adjustments to district policy on longevity bonuses. This would decrease the years of service required for a longevity bonus from 5 years to 3 years of service. The annual bonus would begin at $100 per year of service for those working 3-9 years for the district. This would increase to $125 per year of service for those with 10-19 years at the district; and to $150 per year of service for those working over 20 years.
Board members were in agreement with the proposed changes in longevity bonuses.
But Elgort believed that there ought to be a condition on the longevity payout, based on quality and performance.
“Longevity seems to be the category where you could say, ‘This is a merit’.” Elgort said. “Not only do you just hang out here, but you are a good employee regularly.”
Elgort emphasized that it shouldn’t become a reward where employees have to be exceptional to receive it. “I think it is just a statement that the employee has performed adequately and effectively for the whole year and receives this bonus,” he said.
Elgort made a motion to table the longevity item to allow time for staff to add this merit-based approach to the longevity pay policy. The motion was approved with a unanimous vote.
