2026-10-13 - Finance & Personnel Committee

to voice your opinions or any feedback on the 2027 budget. We're excited to do that. Actually last year was another library so we're thrilled to be there. And then I have one on their announcement. Oh

I just wanted to thank the Budget Department and all the wonderful staff work that's been going into this, our Legislative Reference Bureau, Comptroller and then our Staff Assistant Mr. Chris Lee that

keeps things going on. And I didn't forget about our friends on channel 25 that helps broadcast this so people can be sure that they see what's going on with their own money and investments as I like

to call them. So with that we'll now begin with the Milwaukee Public Library. We'll go to Nathaniel here for the quick presentation on the budget and then the slides and just a reminder I'm sure

you've seen we continue to want to maximize committee questions. And by the way I think it's going excellent. Everyone has been doing wonderful. We've been really getting, I mean yesterday we must

have got, it would have been cool if somebody was keeping track but it felt like we got hundreds of questions in. So I think this flow is working out nicely. So with that we'll go to Budget Director

Nik Kovac. Before that I want to recognize Alderman Mark Chambers Jr. for being here. Alderman Larisa Taylor, Alderman Andrea Pratt. I think we got everybody. Director Kovac please. Thank you Madam

Chair, committee members. Good afternoon. Nik Kovac, Director of the Budget Management Division. Nathaniel Hack will take you through the budget slides for the library before introducing the MPL team.

Good afternoon Madam Chair, all the people in Nathaniel Hack Budget Management Division here to present the 2027 proposed budget for the Milwaukee Public Library. As a broad overview the library's

budget is increasing roughly $1.5 million or 4.4% increase over 2026 and we'll discuss the drivers of that increase in the upcoming slides. Over half of the department's budget increase is in

salaries. This is driven by a few changes to the budget. For starters as you know there was a 3% increase in general city salaries plus a 1% increase in residency pay. Also more substantively the

Office of Childhood Initiatives is moving from the department administration to the library's outreach team and two circulation positions were eliminated as a reduction of drive-up services and

various position changes were enacted to support continued Sunday services. Now the library has a clearer sense of its staffing needs to maintain services seven days a week. The library's operating

budget increased over $200,000. This increase will provide support for submitted HVAC repairs, website redevelopment and general inflationary impacts to goods and services. The equipment budget is

decreased slightly mostly to account for anticipated foundation support of Wi-Fi hotspot circulation. There are two new special funds in the library's account. The first is for security upgrades. This

was supported through the capital budget in 2026 but is being moved to cash financing through the operating budget in 2027 at the same level as 2026 just moving from the capital budget to the

operating budget. The second is moving the special fund for early childhood initiatives from the department administration to the library. The proposed budget includes eliminating drive-up circulation

services at central for checking out materials. The drive-through window will remain open for material returns other than anticipated temporary closure for some capital repairs. And the proposed

budget returns Sunday service to central plus two branches as well as adjusting the hours on Sunday services from the current to 1 to 5 p.m. As mentioned earlier, the budget shifts the department

administration's office of early childhood initiatives into the library. We believe that this shift will help better align city activities and early childhood development and serve as an impact

multiplier by integrating existing services, port structures and organizational leadership. To anticipate an increase of the library's revenues by 6.4%, this is primarily due to an increased payment

for services they provide to the Milwaukee county federate library system. On the capital side, the capital budget includes $1 million for repairs at central library to replace a damaged deck that is

causing leaking into the stacks during significant rain events as well as $2 million to begin architecture and construction of a new branch at midtown. As I mentioned earlier, security and IT needs

that were previously in the capital budget have now shifted to a special fund at the library's operating budget but continue to be funded at the same level as in 2026. The library is a public facing

institution so its public services and outreach comprise the biggest portions of its budget annually. All other services such as administration, IT services, collections and facility management all go

to support those public facing services that the library provides. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to interim director Jennifer Meyer Stern to discuss the services they provide in more

detail. Okay. Thank you so much, Danielle. We'll head on now to our interim director. So good afternoon. Good afternoon, everybody. Jennifer Meyer Stern, deputy library director and I have with me Ha

Hong, library associate director for patron experience and strategy. Welcome. We'll walk through our slides together. First I want to thank the annual and the budget office and the budget director for

working closely with us and collaboratively over the summer as we developed a plan that we think is strong for 2027. And obviously our great team who provide the great services to our community in

creative and innovative ways. In every neighborhood and every stage of life the library is a place where people can return to again and again and find something new waiting for them. Our libraries sit

at the heart of our neighborhoods and walking take great pride in their libraries. These are places where they can read, work, learn, connect or simply be. Across our 13 locations our staff are

dedicated to connecting people to resources, expertise and opportunity throughout the whole system. Next slide, please. We're going to go through these pretty quickly to leave room for questions.

Okay. I want to talk briefly about our core library services. They are vital to Milwaukee because they provide free equitable access to knowledge, digital tools and lifelong learning resources

regardless of socioeconomic background or education. And these are the core services that libraries are providing throughout the country and the world. We open doors to lifelong learning through

various media. We build strong foundations for children through early literacy programming, school readiness, school age learning and caregiver training and resources. We help teens find their voice

through our makerspaces and various programs. Our libraries are safe and welcoming. They provide peer connections. They provide hands on training and they provide skill and confidence development.

We're expanding digital access and skills across the community through technology, devices, high speed Wi-Fi and digital literacy programming and we connect people to economic opportunity. We've had a

particularly successful program called Entrepreneur in Residence and they provide like six to eight weeks worth of training for small businesses, workshopping, business development strategies and

financial tools for our community. We also do things like job search assistance, resume support and provide workforce resources. Finally, we strengthen our neighborhood connections with our 13

locations across the city plus our significant outreach and community partner programming. With our core strong base, this year we've been able to provide some pretty significant activation in our

spaces. Our annual design fest continues to grow. This year we partnered with Lions Tooth and Woodland Patterns and saw over 5,000 people come through Central Library to browse over 100 vendors, take

workshops and celebrate zines and independent small press publishing. In March we hosted Be My Neighbor Day at Central Library in our children's room. Over 1,600 caregivers took part with children and

activities, story times and pictures with PBS's Daniel Tiger. We hosted the library show to kick off September's library card sign up month. 900 people in that lower right photo packed the rotunda to

get limited edition library cards and to enjoy local musicians. It was a significant new event for us all ages and it was a really great turnout. We signed up a total of 149 library cards to patrons

under the age of 25 so really hitting a target audience that we tend to struggle to reach. Our third unit in the community will be hosted at Mitchell Street on November 7th. Mark your calendars. Like

previous years this will be a celebration of Milwaukee's diverse culture, art and food. When our core services are strong and stable and measurable it allows us to enhance and expand where we see the

community interest and response. With that I'm going to turn it over to Ha with our looking ahead to our 11 strategic priorities. Thank you, Jennifer. So earlier this year our managers were asked to

take a closer look at the communities and service areas that they support. They reviewed demographic data, identified changing needs and trends and conducted environmental assessments of the

opportunities and challenges affecting Milwaukee residents. The work provided the community based context for our refreshed strategic framework which builds on and clarifies how NPL's core services

will evolve to meet current needs. The result is a framework comprised of seven strategic directives. The 2027 priorities that you see on the slides before you is the first practical step in carrying

out the refreshed strategic directives. They show how the broader framework will translate to specific programs, services and meaningful impacts for our residents. So for directive one we have

community health and well-being. This is a completely new directive and it really takes us to align our mission and what we do with some of the city's priorities and your priorities. So for example

one of our focus will be to expand food and nutrition programming. We know that food insecurity and access to healthy food are important concerns for many Milwaukee residents. While the library is not

a grocery store or primary food provider we can use our spaces, programs and partnerships to support food education, connect residents to resources and contribute positively to community conversations

and action around food access. Directive two, community third space. We will continue to find ways to make our physical spaces even more welcoming and inclusive. The key next step will be exploring

sensory friendly physical spaces and accessibility improvements to our buildings. We are beginning with a pilot at Central Library. Directive three and four, innovation and future readiness as well as

digital access. We will continue to expand access to our digital collections, virtual reference and online programming. We will also explore responsible use of AI and emerging technologies to improve

our collection discovery, internal workflows and possible self-service models while maintaining our commitment to equity, privacy and public trust. Directive five is literacy and learning. We will

strengthen early literacy support and that means one of the things that we are really excited about is piloting an early literacy hub with robust and diverse decodable book collection and by providing

our staff across the system with training in the science of reading. Directive six is workforce development. In 2027 we will continue our efforts for workforce development, entrepreneurship and small

business. However, we will place additional emphasis on teen career pathways, skill building, career exploration and connection to employment opportunities and resources for our youth. Finally, across

all these priorities, we will strengthen our one NPL organizational culture built on mutual support, clear expectations, collaboration and patient centre service. This seventh strategic directive lays

the foundation that will help NPL deliver on its mission with consistency and care and to ensure that every patron receives welcoming, responsive, high quality service regardless of where and how they

engage with the library. Together these refresh directives provide a framework for us to prioritize our resources, partnerships and services in the upcoming year. Next slide. So this next slide is one

of our more static data points but we wanted to show that we are on track to hit our goal for 1.25 million visitors in 2026 and we're having some deep internal conversations with the mayor's office

with the teams. We will with you all as well on how to truly measure what a successful library is. The conversation nationally is turning towards not just patron counts or traditional circulation

counts but actual usage stats. So what types of programmings count as an interaction? What kind of database use would count as a transaction that might be counted in regular traditional circulation?

And Ha has some experience outside of Milwaukee along those lines. Absolutely. So one of the things is these traditional metrics are still very important. We do want to know how many patrons are

coming into a building. We do want to know how many physical items are being circulated. But the changing and evolving use of how people use our libraries are really changing so we really have to

follow those trends. So, for example, Jennifer mentioned about circulation. Right now our focus in terms of measurement is really on physical -- our physical collection and our e-book collection. But

folks are also accessing our databases, are accessing our digital collections that we're curating from our, for example, our special collections and rarities. So we're really having these strong

conversations and making sure that you all have a full scope of what it is that we're doing and how our residents are using our libraries. We were asked to provide department demographic information.

And this is very similar to last year's. We are seeing approximately 40% BIPOC in our nonmanagement staff and about 35% BIPOC in our management team. And we really think it's important to provide the

breakdown both of the management and the nonmanagement staff. Great residency. We have something to be proud of. Very, very dedicated staff to Milwaukee as shown by their commitment to their

neighborhoods. How many of department employees are Brewers fans? There were a lot of blue and green -- blue and yellow -- blue and yellow shirts last Friday. Blue, yellow and green. Yeah, it works.

And then finally, we can talk a little bit about the Midtown project. We fully committed to the city's path in developing the Midtown project. We hired a design firm in the spring and had been waiting

for the final approvals throughout the summer, which were very exciting for all of us. But we have started to plan for a community engagement, which we know is going to be important to design and

development of the types of spaces we put together. They'll definitely be a makerspace, but we want to see what other kind of community interest is before we fully start the design process. We'll meet

with you all about those findings. And in spring of 2027 is when we hope to start the design development and the official cost estimating. We expect this to run, you know, similar to MLK, if not

slightly less. But we'll bring those numbers forward as soon as we have them from the designer. Final plans and permitting, we expect to come before this body. In summer of 2027, construction bidding

and construction contracting in fall of next year and hopefully by late 2028 have a new library open for us to enjoy. And again, bringing the community along throughout that process. And with that,

we're here to take questions and have a discussion. And I wanted to share that browser our mascot throughout the first pitch at the very end of September with the barrel guy whose name I think that's

a barrel man, actually. They had a great time. The fans loved it. The kids loved it. It was it was really super fun. And somebody in this crowd was wearing a mascot costume. Awesome. Well, that's

exciting. Great. Well, thank you. And thank you to many of the staff here. We see you and appreciate your work. We will first begin on my left today, which is Charlotte, all the women, Charlotte Moore

and then move this way. That's kind of how we do it. So all the women, Charlotte Moore. Thank you. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Number one, want to say just how great of a job you all the staff

have been doing at our libraries. One of the highlights for me was that huge event that brought in hundreds, I think it was a concert, hundreds of young people to the central library. And it was just

like, wait, where are these young people going? They're going to the library for a concert. Like how amazing that it was creative. It was out of the box thinking and, you know, whoever helped

coordinate that definitely kudos. We'd love to see more opportunities like that for our young people just because how libraries look, you know, yesteryear is a little different from how it might look

today. So we definitely want to change with the time. So thank you all for that. Yeah. And if I could just come in, it's our social media team made some really fantastic connections with local artists

and local musicians for the opening of MLK. And so their work really developed into some really great event and something we hope to expand. Yeah, absolutely. And shout out to the social media team.

We're getting a little jealous here. Oh my goodness. Everybody, by the way, you all, you know, a lot of the departments are always saying, we got to do what the library is doing. Settle down people.

Let the library be great. Okay. I love it. I absolutely love it. Just a few quick questions. I see that, you know, you all are eliminating the drive-through option. I know that folks will probably

still drop off books at the drive-through. Talk to us a little bit about why you all decided to discontinue those services. I mean, I think the first thing is seeking budget opportunities where return

on investment might not be as strong pre COVID, even obviously it grew during COVID, but even pre COVID we were seeing double digits in the tens of thousands of use for that service. And that just

really has never dropped off in 2023 to 2024. And it hasn't quite bumped up again. Okay. And the team on the public services side can talk a little bit about how we do have pickup service across all

13 locations. So if there's a need for somebody to have materials brought out to them, we do provide that service. Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. So we still have curbside pickup. People can call, pick up

their holes, request from materials. So even though we are proposing to remove drive up, the option of staying in your car and still getting the materials that you need is still available. Excellent.

That's good. We have a capital project need to work in that space. Also, we've had some leaking in the decking above where drive up is for several years and it's above our historic collection. So we

think it's important to address that and we would have to close drive up anyway. So we could pilot this and if there's huge outcry, we could consider other options next year. Okay. And talk to me a

little bit about just so that also folks understand there's a library board. What is the relationship between the library board and like the library director and the staff? How does that relationship

work? So libraries are considered a matter of statewide concern and that gives them a unique statute to set sort of the boundaries and the rules for how libraries operate within the state. You know, I

could speculate about why that was determined back in the early 1900s. I expect that they wanted to keep politics out of collection development and so sort of to keep a board of trustees sort of

focused on the equity and not get sort of maybe, you know, people's feelings about what books are appropriate to have in libraries. I would suspect that that was the original. So because we have a

board of trustees, there's statutory language and I'm not a lawyer but I like to pretend. Basically says that any funds raised and that means taxed fall under the authority of the board of trustees.

Our library has always had a very strong and collaborative relationship with the policymakers of the council and the mayor's office and so I don't think we've ever pushed, if you give us a budget to

be open these number of days, we would we would typically not have the board operate anything other than what was the will of the policymakers. So I've not experienced that but it is just a unique

statutory language and it's sort of like the foreign police commission, I suppose, to keep politics out of policing. When Mayor Norquist was in the legislature, he switched to a cabinet form of

government through statute and creation of chapter 62 and included the library director as one of his appointees. So I think throughout the state, the library boards are the ones that are hiring but

in cities of the first class, the mayor makes the appointments of the library director. Got it. Okay. So we can, you know, say that the board really helps with sort of the strategy, you know, help

assisting with not the day to day operation but the sort of overall strategy, you know, hey, if we're going to open up new libraries, this is what would make sense type of thing. Okay. Got it. All

right. Thank you for that. Yeah. And through that statute, actually, our buildings are controlled by the board of trustees so we have processes that we use when we vacate a building, for example,

where the board takes action to turn a building over to DCD for redevelopment or sale. So we've got some built in processes where we work very closely with the city. Got it. And are there times where,

you know, the library board may not agree with the direction that, you know, the library staff or the director or the mayor's office wants to go in, sometimes they may not agree. I've not experienced

that very frequently. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to ask a question about capital and facilities. Again, shout out to LRB. Thank you all so much for synthesizing some of this information

for us. So there's about 96.2 million in identified facility needs, including approximately about 26.1 million identified as immediate or within the next five years. What is NPL's strategy for

prioritizing those needs alongside the Midtown Project? I mean, these numbers came from an outside company that did an assessment of all of our buildings based on conditions and some capital planning

that we've done previously. Unfortunately, we do know that the library, you know, has to fit within the broader capital planning budget of the city and that the budget office is having to make some

pretty difficult decisions about roads, other priorities from the community that are very, very important. So, you know, we have a strategy of trying to fix things as we're able to afford fixing them.

And then we have a great facilities team that have, you know, we have an employee who's been with the library for 35 years and knows our HVAC systems. And if something breaks over here, he knows where

to go to fix it. So, I mean, it's, I would say like our facilities team is amazing and being creative and keeping things running. And I do think we're going to hit a wall at some point, especially

with central library. And I just, I've said that to the budget office, we are currently in the process of working with an outside firm to assess our foundation, our friends and our fundraising arms,

because there might be a possibility to push forward like a large capital fundraising campaign for central library. Having come from the budget office and worked in other city departments, I've been

very focused on, you know, what are opportunities to increase our resources outside of the city's tax base. And I can tell you that most library systems around the country are not tax base funded. So

we just have to continue to explore those. I can't really talk too much about where we are, but we are, we've got some ideas to do some future planning. Is there a matrix of the facilities as far as,

you know what, we'll be able to hold this off for another two years, but oh my gosh, at three, we're definitely, you know, we're going to need to get it done. But is it for facilities specifically for

the libraries? Do we have a matrix as far as most, you know, highest need versus not? Yes, this plan did give us like immediate five year, 20 year, I think is up to 25 years. And the immediate need

identified for 2027 was $3 million. And that is what our budget is planned currently. Yeah, for capital planning, but we will hit some difficult decisions in the coming years. And this question might

be for Director Kovac, because, you know, the library is not one of those that it's not a service driven as far as fees, right, you know, we don't collect fees. So it's this is a what we provide, you

know, it's a service we provide our community. Well, when my books are late, they take a fee. But it goes back to the general fund. The 10 cents, come on, come on. Is it oh, wait, you're on time. So

you don't even know what they've bumped it up to. Yeah, pay your fees, Nick, please. I know it goes to a good cause. Yes, thank you. We're gonna tax Nick from now on. He's gonna he's gonna cover the

cost of our libraries for your generous endowment. There you go. I love that. So how what is sort of the plan just because you know, this is not an income generating fund over the end because of the

capital needs of a lot of our facilities. What sort of the goal is it just a little, you know, a few million each, like, what's the goal, especially now that we're building this new library at

Midtown, which I'm excited for alderman chamber to be in alderman chambers district, it's going to be a beautiful, it looks beautiful. But how are we going to keep up with sort of those overarching

facility cost? I mean, as challenging as the operating budget is, we talked, I talked a lot about that, you know, in the overview, you know, trying to close the $100 million gap three straight years.

Yeah, the capital budget, it probably has even more cracks in it. We talked about that with fire extensively yesterday. And yes, Jennifer and her team have been very forthright with us about the

ongoing needs at Central and branches, although the needs at Central are of a different scale, because it's how many buildings in one? It's 480,000 square feet. It's a massive complex. So and you're

right, I mean, to some extent, the new libraries have crowded out funding, maybe you could I mean, but not just in libraries. I mean, if you look at the police administration building, if you look at

the floor at City Hall, if you go down the list, the deferred maintenance is growing and growing and growing. And so at some point, you can't kick the can forever. At some point, if you can't afford

to maintain a building, really, you should have less buildings. But that's not a decision. Anybody plans on making or wants to make. So and I mean, I don't mean that specific to libraries. I mean, no,

no, no, sure. Yeah, we should have less of all these built different buildings and facilities, all complex included. So just that would that's what the the math would tell you the long term planning

math would tell you if there's going to be no change in our in our availability of funding for for capital, because right now the main way other than major roads where we get significant grants, you

know, most of our capital funding is funded with levy support a general obligation bar. So unless you're willing to pay more interest and definitely to borrow more, you're either that or deferred

maintenance. So it is at some point, it's going to catch up to us. In the meantime, we're trying to stay within our means and a lot of triage and a lot of prioritizing the library is not the only

department that's asked give us a list tell us what you really need. Yeah. Like now versus what can you maybe get away with for a year or two, but then the year or two comes right and then what do you

do? So I don't it's not a great answer. But it's a problem. Yeah, yeah. With that, as far as what makes sense as far as hours and because I know that we have Sunday hours. And, you know, I appreciate

the chart the graph around how much usage we have for Sunday hours. Would it make sense to budgetary wise would it make sense to just keep Sunday hours at the Central Library, you know, to again, I'm

just hypothetical to help with keeping costs down. I mean, we did a pretty thorough review of the data and the usage patterns at all the locations even understanding that Mitchell Street just opened

at the beginning of July to Labor Day out Labor Day was July. Yeah. And how has a couple bullet points around that we also tried to survey like who who were we serving what age populations were we

serving looked at a little bit at Cirque a little bit at interactions and we're comfortable with the proposal that the mayor is making but we did also look at what what would it look like to just have

hours at Central. What did that look like for Sunday hours as far as just some of that if you know, if you know a fan. Yeah. So, for example, average patron count per open hours per hour at at Central

the average is 164. Good hope is 17 Mitchell and again Mitchell's just since September 13 after Labor Day is 12 King is 16 and to pick a new is 27 and that's average per hour that we're open so we're

open 10 to 5 and similarly circulation data total Sunday checkouts Central is about close to 15,000 good hope is a little more than 3,000 Mitchell 85 and again keep in mind it just opened on sure sure

King is 389 and then to pick a new is about 7800 and circulation now in terms of the categories of patrons that we're seeing that's a little bit more difficult to measure but one of the measurement

that we have is patron interaction so essentially people who come to the desk ask questions or who staff are interacting with when they're roving the shelves and who they're assisting and what we find

is that it is heavily adult users that are frequenting Sundays for questions that typically error computer questions printing questions device questions room reservation questions so that's the

category of users based on that particular data and I would also want to comment to we've we've implemented a new tool to capture entry points and even capacity and we've been playing around with that

tool it's been about a year and a half but it's been more system-wide this year in 2026 and so has been looking at some heat maps with her team and so we're going to have better data in the coming

year to really measure how people are using our buildings and what those age groups are we hope and currently this year it's proposed to have three branches open on Sundays and change the hours from

10 to 5 to 1 to 5 again that was based on data and inputs that we saw just for clarity to branch plus central not three branches wait say that one more time two branches plus central so three

locations not three branches just three locations yes thank you thank you for that clarification madam chair I will leave you other colleagues will bring it back around us so much definitely on to

alderman scott spiker thank you I guess the remaining capital question wasn't there 200 K in the budget for this year devoted to capital in capital yes that was the planning money to hire the design

firm to begin the initial building assessments and this fall to plan the community engagement surveys and then come up with some initial renderings okay so that money wasn't devoted to traditional

capital expenses in capital library it was devoted to the planning well planning is part of capital I mean that's in every major project right you're not just paying not planning for capital library

it was planning for what's next right mid transitioning capital to next stage in the line I guess I'll pick up on my colleagues questions regarding Sunday hours so I guess for folks keeping score at

home their Sunday hours were advocated for by the council led by the chair of this committee a couple years back ended up with central and two branch locations the board chose good hope and tip a

canoe one north one south and then last year there was I believe another attempt to cut Sunday hours and the council added budget amendment which restored not only those two branches but added two

more King and Mitchell and as was stated there's not much information to go on for the two new ones this year we just have July forward for King and September forward for Mitchell how so this is kind

of a pattern we're we're seeing here the proposed budget cuts money that would otherwise go towards Sunday hours in the requested budget did you put forward did the department put forward Sunday hours

and did they price out what that would amount to and what was the cost to continue budgets yeah the requested budget had the central plus four branches and then you can give you the you are you

looking for differences in the numbers yeah just how much I think I saw it on a slide 689 or something like that is six eight hundred eighty six thousand was what we had estimated for the reduction

from four branches down to two and the hours to one hours from producing 25 and I seem to remember when the council did the budget amendment last year we were expecting one to five and then there was

a decision made to extend it to ten I'm not sure how that was made I think the service model was announced between well right over I can't remember the timing exactly our staffing study came through

in late August and so we were kind of not and it wasn't just for Sunday hours it was sort of staffing across the system and both SERC in public services and so we were trying to interpret the data

come up with a model that we felt would support what the council wanted for the Sunday hours and I know that was a lot of work put in by Joan yourself the team and so did all that work to figure out

the new staffing model not just for Sundays but to include Sundays and then I know I noticed there was reference to a survey did you ever go back to staff and say hey how is this working out and what

did they think absolutely we are Sunday scheduling is based on a set of rotations so and each rotation lasts about three to four months and every staff member system-wide unless they have an official

accommodation is required to work a minimum of one Sunday and so after each rotation our HR department sends out a survey to those that have worked a Sunday shift in total we had about three hundred

thirty nine responses and some of those could be repeat folks through if they're working multiple Sundays and what they have found is so one of the questions we asked is what is the busyness or like

are you overwhelmed during Sunday in terms of the amount of people coming in and what we have found is that most folks say that they are pretty that it's pretty comfortable level and with but also

some noting that and it's not really busy during my shift at least and then the other questions that we asked is well how do you work as a team since folks are coming in from different location and a

home location their assigned location and one of the really great things that has come out for from this staffing model is that people are getting to know each other across the system people are

learning from each other so overall I would say that this kind of one NPL way of staffing that really looks at our employees as system-wide employees has really been beneficial and helpful in not just

sustaining Sundays but also just the way that we operate every day of the week and what about the staff I know there was initially some trepidation about whether staff would be keen to the idea of

Sundays and that was that found to be realized or did people adjust generally we've implemented Sunday successfully okay what sort of outreach has NPL done to advertise Sunday hours has there been any

attempt to engage say MPS or the charter schools and say hey this is something in your neighborhood because I found at least at Tippecanoe which the election commission was in here the other day

saying how much early voting we had sometimes that was their first recognition that there were Sunday hours at the library and I put it in a newsletter and you know put it out on social media but it

still seems like there's a bunch of people who don't know so what have the efforts been there and do you have any fears especially if you're looking at cutting back from four branches to two to the

libraries have barely had time to get off the ground so so I guess focusing the question that was what sort of outreach was done and specifically what sort of outreach was done with schools if any

Melissa Howard director of communications and community engagement so for every library we have posted on all of our channels so email website social media and we've repeated the same for every single

branch with our schools we do have an outreach team all of our materials do show all of our open hours we have the materials that are out there specifically to MPS I am not aware of what we have done

there but our staff do work with them very frequently and talk about what is available yeah I mean it was earlier mentioned that some of the engagements with patrons who are with adults rather than

kids I would think before we write off the kids we want to make sure we've had a robust attempt to engage them with that and were there I don't remember seeing a tip the canoe but maybe it was at

other libraries were there big things on the doors and now open Sundays or anything like that or was it just you in the bottom of your email if you check real quick you might see now open Sundays yeah

we have signage that we send out to all of the branches to put on their doors all of our our schedule of ours are updated with that information as well so we have lots of places that people confine

and interact with us yeah and I saw they're on the list of ours but I just maybe I just missed it the big big red sign saying no open Sundays or something like that so I guess you know served on the

library board for a time and we have all of the council representatives on the board on the big board here in alderwoman cogs alder taylor and alder pratt the council you know put in some serious

funds what was the library's the budget amendment last year total do you all remember don't know that number off the top of my head but I can certainly find it for you it was greater than 689 well

that was to go from central only to four branches so it wasn't to go from two branches to four branches didn't we do it in stages didn't we do one budget amendment the first year to do the sunday

hours year round at central plus two branches and then yes the proposed budget last year was just for central on sundays the amendment that you're referring to actually went from central to four

branches of course the amendment a couple years ago did not include the new staffing model so it really isn't yeah comparing yeah not compare apples apples yeah because it I mean it what is

disheartening is something that was advertised pretty early on once act 12 passed which is you know the non revenue generating departments that are substantial in size are police fire and library and

police and fire are off the table for any sort of budgetary savings because most of it is staff death that is has very strong union and advocates for them very well and so costs go up every year

library is kind of sitting out there is not a revenue generator in any way shape or form but something that provides a vital service so the mayor's proposed budget would I mean it it's pretty clear

would cut libraries in the sense of libraries that are open now on sundays wouldn't be under the proposed budget so I guess this council just has to look at that clearly and see what we think about

that do we want to have a reduction in and libraries at this time we have what's pretty clear as a child literacy crisis here in the city and I know MPL is is doing good work there but ability to

engage kids ability to engage parents who you know are working and slipping in after work at night is maybe not so easy until we've seen a robust attempt at getting sunday hours out there in the in

the air I'm not so sure it's a wise idea to give give up before it's gotten traction so I guess the question here and then I'll just be quiet for a while is of course budgetary savings being you know

encouraged very strongly by the budget office weren't a major factor then of course you would advocate for additional sunday hours and you think it's a good thing and I'm sure you'd love to expand it

if financially we were feasible so more access is more access but it costs money yep understood okay that's it for the moment thank you madam chair okay thank you I do want to continue with that

discussion of the proposed reduction in access and hours to library hours my let's see here my notes tell me when I'm looking at the okay good the patrons per day of the week not all sunday library

hours started on January 1st where's the notation for that of this graph this is for the 2026 and good hope and typically we're open year round on Sundays at this point so then are you not including

Martin Luther King Mitchell correct this is just central good hope and difficult canoe because the data for MLK and Mitchell was too light to add into here so I would not be in a fair comparison so

this is just the ones that have been open full year okay I mean the days of the week for those two that the numbers on Sunday would be so small you wouldn't even see that well every patron matters

correct with all due respect I do think that we need to acknowledge because you have Mitchell Martin Luther King and those are two that are missing yet right I mean I get because Mitchell was the last

one I think in September I mean okay I just don't know which one it is because it's like if we started so late and then we're saying that nobody really used it it never got a fair that's not what I'm

trying to communicate this I'm just don't want to show that there is almost no Sunday usage because the data isn't there because they've been open for a month I didn't that was fair to Mitchell or MLK

to include them in this because they just started Sunday hours okay I always want to politely say that it would be interesting and I will officially request it like if we look first I want to look at

the output mirrors the input so I'm not sure how Mitchell was like was there a big grand opening with the president Perez in September if there was I might have missed it but it would be interesting

to see if it was marketed we have to share the same metrics like this is we get in these talks all the time if we're not sharing the same metrics I'm going to have a different metric and honestly I

think a couple visits that have never happened in an area that is so diverse and hasn't really had that type of service before is pretty valuable but on a different spectrum it might look differently

it'd be interesting if you took Martin Luther King and Mitchell Street took what they had and then amplified it for the whole year you see I'm saying like I guess does that data point making sense

like so say that there was 200 visits to MLK I just feel like I would like a separate slide it should be noted different I get your point I do but I would almost wonder like if we modeled it out for

lack of a better word what would that look like so we'd certainly provide the data for you know then I think that how did verbally provide the data already for Sunday hours at MLK and Mitchell but

said that they just started so if you were comparing days of the week all year they would have very few because they just started Sunday hours that wouldn't be a reasonable comparison I guess the

point that the council wants to make and I'm gonna go out on a bit of a limb here is that we don't I just want to be really straight up it feels like it never really got a fair shake it didn't really

get out of the gates and then furthermore my note said I had here that I thought it was six hundred and twenty nine thousand dollars usually I know the numbers because it's my name next to it that is

not right no that's correct okay okay I remember where I put my name on it and so the point is is like what I'm not understanding is that's almost the exact cut by dollars was it six eighty something

like are we it's I've said this before and I hate to have to repeat it but almost feels like we're paying for this over and over and over again and we're not getting what we paid for so like where we

paid into in fact last year was I thought an amazing progress in that there was the new model we if you will paid into invested in the new model that you had put forward to us the new staffing model

so what I'm trying to understand and to my colleagues in the general public is if we invested in that model doesn't the model still exist if the model still exists of the Sunday working hours and we

paid for that model and invested in it why are we not seeing the hours on Sunday just that's where you decided to cut so the model is I mean we can ever give you more detail but the model is just

where they choose to assign staff and how they're covering but you have to pay those salaries again every year you don't you don't get twenty eight salaries in a twenty seven budget you don't get

twenty seven salaries in twenty six you have zero layoffs well but there's attrition okay so I would I will provide you a memo with the breakdown of the costs and how we cost it out both the amendment

for last year and the reduction for this year I think the nuance is that we change the hours from ten to five to one to five and staff had been working a longer day and so we basically the hours are

reduced and two locations are reduced so those two together I think we can parse out the hours for you and plus the four percent salary increases with our high residency team you know we okay so we

reduced the number of hours on a Sunday from ten to five to one to five in this proposal across the system not just for the two locations was it ever ten it was ten to five it's ten to five right now

in twenty in twenty five was a ten yes no it wasn't it was definitely not ten o'clock in twenty twenty five staff working a full Sunday because we thought that would make the schedule more palatable

instead of trying to get them to work a half day during the week okay so in the first year we introduced it staff would come in do projects do program planning and then we were open from twelve to

five this year so this year starting in March open public hours were are currently ten to five staff come in from eight thirty to five so they work a full eight hour shift and then we're open to the

public from ten to five okay but in the entire library budget which is arguably not large enough why is this the only spot that we keep cutting like there's nowhere else that we can cut there's no

other like it's just the Sunday hours like I don't know I'm just frustrated because it's been year after year after year and again my frustration is it feels like it's just never gotten you know off

the ground out of the like we haven't given the community a chance with one of them only going online in September which was last month how can we you know and that's a neighborhood that you know is

most has a lot of bilingual activity like it just takes time and I don't know it's just frustrating because the council has spoken out I still think some of the patron numbers need to be reevaluated

as well like I've asked so I guess I just don't know how else to express you know the frustration because when we look at the events that I think are exceptional and I go out of my way to send

compliments we love the library you know with big Frank that was cool and like those are the opportunities that we're missing out on Sundays when most people are available like you know that was I

think a was that Saturday night I think it was Friday was there I remember I remember wanting to go and I was like oh darn it but I just believe that that's creating the space for all that list of

things that you were talking about literacy hubs etc when people can get there so the metrics I still need to be reevaluated a little bit but I guess what you're telling me is how those numbers when

we put six hundred and twenty nine thousand in last year something else but that's yeah thousand so that amendment did have Sunday hours at Good Hope and Tippet canoe year round but was not budget for

a full year of Sunday hours at MLK in Mitchell so we always knew full year costs were going to be higher than that they're also for positions to custodial and to security that were unfunded off

positions at in that amendment through the course of 2026 has become clear those students be funded permit positions so actually four positions are unfunded that amendment that would need to be funded

for Sunday hours to continue at four branches so there are some nuances to that number and that funding sorry that the staffing model has been somewhat iterative we have made some position changes

throughout the course of 2026 that have come to you with position ordinance changes to accommodate libraries actual needs so when we put that amendment together it was really this is what we think

will work and as the course of the year has gone on I've worked with library to identify what actually is working and adjust accordingly so it is not completely an apples to apples comparison yeah I

think it's been explained well by Jennifer and I think there's a lot of different things that move so the number is does move year to year not just because of rage raises but because the staffing

model is learning from itself and so there's going to be changes so the number is not going to exactly match what it cost in 26 isn't going to exactly match 27 especially when you factor in the summit

full year summit half year what the mayor is proposing now is two at a full year and the savings versus if we'd funded four branches plus central so are the 689 and so that and that those are ongoing

annual costs which if there's a two percent citywide annual raise approved this year will be even higher in 28 and in the way and we're to avoid layoffs any changes you make need to be within the the

cadence of attrition so for instance if there if a council member or the mayor wanted to propose more than have no Sunday hours accepted central we think that would likely end up with layoffs in the

27 budget because because you've been building up staff for this and you don't want to be pulling you know so there's a lot of factors to consider I just really want to emphasize that the staffing

model is just a way to allocate resources in a smart way that reflects demand it is but it is an annual cost it doesn't go away just because you funded it one year you gotta keep funding right and I

think when the council first led on this we were like spending overtime remember we were trying to figure this out and I feel like we've been going every step of the way so to reverse the changes

would be an amendment of six hundred eighty nine thousand dollars does what you saved roughly the way that we calculate amendments is slightly different because this uses a fringe benefit estimate

whereas when we do amendments we actually add back into health care retirement and Social Security so it'd be a similar number but it might be slightly different but it'd be in that range I guess I'll

conclude my part on the Sunday hours is like I just ask us what metric are we using like are we saying we're just reducing them because we can't afford them or because they're not being used or

because we don't think we have the potential to fill them with positive you know activity and programming what is the metric and it's probably gonna sound different to all of us up here but my metric

is I want to create that third space that space that people so desperately need in our city all kinds of people at all times to feel safe and comfortable because that's what you create the library is

the most one of the most welcoming spaces in our city and everybody should know that out there that's working out there for all ages and all people at all times in their lives so we I want to maximize

that I want a city that you know honestly I realize it's pricey but I would like every everything to be open you know and people to be compensated for that work especially on weekends but that would

be a pretty amazing where anybody could walk you know where they where they see fit to connect with that important data and so that's something that I'm interested in I'll have to see and obviously

balance this with with other needs I just we can come back to it but I wanted to wrap up my part on Sunday hours and I will look at that and I'm glad that I asked the metrics cuz I otherwise I

wouldn't know on I have a bunch of stuff here but I just want to move through audiobooks remember when we had like changed that contract and everything are we we're not any changes here is that

staying the same thing remember that it was like two years ago and I for some reason had a lot of constituents that had used the audiobooks and then they were disappointed that we changed the contract

but it seemed like a corporate thing access to audiobooks is it gonna remain the same in 2027 I'm Carly Peterson associate library director of IT and technical services and collections so what you're

referring to was the vendor with hoopla yes so we changed down system wide across of all Milwaukee County Federated Libraries system members changed down from four checkouts a month to two checkouts a

month right because they use a pay-per-use model so we've been continuing to work with McFliss as well as at our internal level to explore other options for e audiobooks because we do continue to see

a significant rise in that area the greatest use that we see is actually with the Libby app or overdrive yes and that's also done at the statewide consortium so everyone is paying in and walking

public library along with other McFliss members is actively contributing additional funds that specifically support the Milwaukee County Federated Library system almost Key County Patrons. And we also

added Comics Plus which is another ebook vendor and we've seen great use with that which is a really wonderful resource. It includes Beyond Comics or Beyond Graphic Novels but we also know Graphic

Novels really are helpful for building literacy including supporting early literacy skills. So we're excited to include that. We continue to explore other models. Right now we are maintaining the

status quo as budget allows. Koopla is a challenging one though because basically every time someone uses it we pay for that cost. So it's an unpredictable cost that changes over the course of the

year. It's like a super audiobook user I see. Yeah. So the more people who use it the more expensive the product is. Whereas other models are more sustainable. For example, Comics Plus is a single use

subscription. So we do have to kind of keep pace with where our budget is at for the year in terms of how we determine usage with that. We continue to explore models to make sure that these resources

are affordable to our community because we are seeing rises in demand for both e-books and e-audio books as well. Okay. Great. Thank you. Wonderful. Last but not least of my questions I was keeping it

to three areas. The move of the early education specialist from the mayor's office I think they're up tomorrow to the library. What is the thinking for that? Is the funding just moving 100%? What is

the plan for that? Again, I'm trying to understand what we see here are a lot of numbers but then we kind of miss the why. So what is the vision for that? I mean I think our early childhood education

programs and services are so meaningful and known around the community and this position started out in the library. I think there was an effort to try to highlight the specific work that she was

doing and then we were just asked we would like to consolidate this her services back under what the library is doing because we're so we're the point in the community for all those services and

they're very robust. How has some details maybe just a couple of the programs? Is it just like kind of taking it and shifting it like no change in resources just a total move? That's part I'm not

understanding. There's a slight reduction in the special fund but that really is due to some things the library is already providing support services so those are already in house at the library so we

are confident the same level of service will be able to be provided at a slightly lower cost because they already have in HR department for example a marketing department so they have some of the

wraparound services that are currently being provided. Is that person because I guess I'm trying to understand that the person that occupied that position I guess the intentionally that they would

move to library maintain their position so leaving the mayor's kind of off because that was in the main way back when it was but it's most recently it's been in Department of Administration. Okay. So

from DOA to library. Started in the library, went to the mayor's office then went to DOA and it just I think it just makes sense for her work to be incorporated with our the city's broad early

childhood initiatives and with I mean I think Paul mentioned this briefly in our comments but we're planning on doing some pretty extensive training across our children's and teen librarians to have

them in the science of reading skill sets and so I just think having all that coordinated support will support her operations as well. Yeah that sounds great. Madam Chair. Okay we're moving on to

Bergellis did you have a quick question? No just with your comment I just I thought it was a great move because it's the early childhood is just an office of one it's only one person said have that

support you know and it be moved back in the library I thought that made complete sense so that was definitely a good move. Okay all right thank you for that. All the member goes. Thank you very much

piggybacking off the same similar topic is the library able and this position coming back to library might make this more possible but it's a library able to activate and program Sundays more to bring

people in at the same time help address literacy deficiencies in our community we're not Milwaukee Public Schools we're not a charter school but we are the library and phonics and reading are

fundamental for young people Milwaukee has time and time again slipped further and further behind up until very recently is the library able capable to activate bring more people in on Sundays and do

something more that has tangible benefit to young people in the community we are exploring ways to activate children's programming in ways that are less staff-reliant and so we're piloting some things

at central right now we had several like 700 people come through for a big play date at central library I think it was 700 close to that plates are fun but they don't help people free well no but

there's there are there are activities as part of that play date that we found were pretty successful and we'd like to explore I mean story times are replicable and I'm gonna let hot talk a little bit

more about some of the things we're exploring to have sort of off the shelf activated programming so this next rotation which actually commences of this Sunday rotation that is this particular Sunday

all the way to the end of the year we are staffing all our children's library assistance and librarians at central library and with the hope that they will develop programs and story times while it's

central for this third rotation I think that will starting what date and ending what date so October 18th is the start of the rotation will probably since you know I want to give them ample time to

develop it will probably commence in November all the way to the last Sunday in December I forget what that Sunday in December is I think it's like December 13th or 27th or something like that so

we're going to have some story times or play dates at central library during that time on Sundays I will add to these play dates they're not just where folks are librarian staff throw toys and people

build Legos they're really intense they are going to comprise of perhaps the story time section the signs of reading is about play reading talking singing so all those components are really

thoughtfully and intentionally placed in these big family play dates type of programming so we'll see how that goes and if we can develop them the one thing I will say is when we have more Sundays

location it becomes a bit more challenging because we only have a certain number of children's reference staff librarians who are our children's programmer youth services programmers we can certainly

cross train and that is one of the priorities that we have in the coming year when we look at ourselves as a system wide team so we have some contingency plans and some ways to up Sunday activation of

our spaces and that does include to your point altar woman altar ultimate galas genders of social construct but yes so we're looking at ways to activate it okay would you be receptive to additional

help to activate that or outside organizations or plans processes people to come and help activate some days yes you know if any kind of suggestions that you have we will certainly welcome them stay

tuned all right are there other you mentioned something in your opening remarks about how our Milwaukee library system is funded how are other library systems across the country funded I'll share a

report with you or a table with you about that it was part of the staffing study and part of work that Nathaniel I have been looking at for a couple of years I would say in the they're part of the

school tax base so many libraries are part of what would be the MPS tax base this was happening in cities in the 70s and 80s which were under greater stress than Milwaukee was at the time our stress

came in the later 80s and 90s from an economic perspective it really just depends on the state there it runs the entire gamut some have their own taxing authorities are part of like a museum district

cultural some are property tax some use income tax or sales tax some it's state funded and like there's a different a different makeup in different jurisdictions there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer

to that question an act 12 limits the city from funding anything any cultural programming to no more than 5% of our budget I wouldn't need to they might but I don't think we're anywhere close to 5%

and running into any risks there we one of the things we are looking at is the offerings that we could make statewide so some of the technology investments we've made over the last couple of years

including you know phone reference service we're pushing that statewide and that will be available on Sundays you know through the current program how mentioned that we just have some ideas for some

statewide services that we think are promising and we think will raise the profile of Milwaukee at a state level are there any books that the library has had in circulation that are have been removed

from circulation because they're one of a long list of banned books that other library systems ban absolutely not so we we have banned books in Milwaukee have banned books is there any special

tracking on how often those books are activated or probably not requested I'm not asking for that we could run reports but we don't have a banned book section and I'm not I'm not gonna have a banned

book section we have a banned book we have banned book displays we're celebrating it and so if folks should come and check out some of the banned books that displays at their local branch or at

Central Library and consume those banned books I think that would be an interesting visit but thank you very much I appreciate that thank you madam chair nothing more interesting than the rare books

room that's my favorite you know everything going okay with that like everything's going with that and frankly the the two topics that we touched on briefly are we've we made an investment through a

grant from the foundation they brought us a nice piece of equipment to do some digitization the teams that run the collections and that run the special collections have been really prioritizing some

fun digital collections we have this we have a Mass Magic poster collection that's very unique and folks from Chicago came up and looked at it so we've digitized some of those where we see interest

outside of the state even and her and her team are exploring ways to use AI to help us figure out what needs to be processed and how to prioritize those and so we've got some interesting things

happening in the resource library world amazing one quick one before I head back to all the room more if she has any oh I forgot about all the Roman cogs then let me let me yield to all the Roman cogs

I'm so sorry all the Roman cogs no problem for the early childhood position that's being moved back to the library because we know it started in the library and I remember it was a lot of reasons

given for it you know changing it then I think what what what's the difference between now and and when it originally came there what do you see is gonna be the difference for why it makes sense to do

it now as opposed to when it first was there I mean I think it makes sense to consolidate the city's offerings in the early childhood arena I think you know our team is participating in that and the

bigger Milwaukee initiative that's Milwaukee reach out and read well and so you know I think that initially when it was moved to the mayor's office they maybe thought it would raise the profile of the

work being done in early childhood education also knowing that the library was offering those services as a core or regular part of our services but we in Milwaukee Public Library have been raising

our profile and trying to market and consolidate all the offerings that we have and I think it just made sense at that time to bring her program back under ours as we're marketing this broader

umbrella of early childhood education and all the work that's being done by the city and just and to be clear I ask that question because I support you know our effort for early childhood education I

just think the moving around of the office continuously is maybe having an effect that isn't so positive on the impact it could be having so I want to make sure that whatever moves we do are for the

better so whatever we need to learn from the past experience that we do that and so that we really do have the impact that I think we all want to have with the office so that was my intention with

that question also currently that office has a office of its own I think it's in my district so with the move to the library the physical space that they currently hold as the office would no longer

be the first year allows them to continue the lease on that space is my understanding from the head of DOA and that we would be working in the next six to eight months to figure out how to best

incorporate the work that she's doing out in the community with with our other offerings okay so this year's budget I believe it only pays for the central and two additional neighborhood libraries for

the Sunday hours what are the two neighborhood libraries that are intended to be covered in this budget that is entirely up to the library board to decide the administration is not here to tell

library board which branches should be open on Sundays and that would be true with four branches as well they could choose different four branches than they currently do okay Jennifer what do you

think the recommendation to the board is going to be your recommendation and I for the public I'm a board member so I really am interested and I have a library that's in the heat for this so I am

interested in knowing which two are you recommending of course alder woman I do not have a recommendation to make to the board at this time but we would definitely bring data and you know facilities

are always part of the conversation the you know the offerings at the facilities so we would want to make sure that we were offering two branches that had you know the newest and best offerings for

the neighborhoods and I'm sorry that's all I can say right now because I have I want to talk to the board of trustees first so yeah I do think though that that's still hard because I think of the four

libraries they all have been they're all fairly new they're all beautiful newly remodeled or newly worked on and with two not having a full year of numbers to compare to it's not like we're comparing

apples to apples so I really do want to know especially before I take a vote on this but what those numbers I get if you don't know the numbers right now or you don't know the what your recommendation

is gonna be right now but before the November vote I would like to know when do you see you do you think the board won't decide so after the vote or will there be conversations before I would be happy

to have conversations before with the board and with the alders I do want to offer you know a briefing with certainly alderman Jimmy Trevitch and you if you're interested in how we could parse out the

numbers because we have some ways we parse them out like you said hourly entries which level the playing field a little bit more from the year over years and so I'd be happy to to to brief you and

anyone who's interested on on the other ways that we parsed out the numbers we weren't able to get into the details about today and yeah and I do think that we have not previously made a

recommendation until the budget is adopted but again I am certainly happy to have conversations with with folks thank you thank you so much okay some work to be done there for sure before I go back to

alderman more and spiker alder woman cogs asked this last year do we now have a place where you can actually rent out central library for private events to provide revenue okay so I like I saw it you

know I saw events there but like so someone could do a wedding private events etc it's pretty easy to book we haven't sorted out weddings yet okay because that's going to take a bit of a deeper dive

for the library to ascertain both what the field is like and also working with the city attorney to make sure that we're covering costs not making a profit profit but also you know paying for the

spaces paying for improvement of the spaces so that was kind of phase two for us with our meeting room changes last year okay don't think there's a lot of potential there it's just so cool like the

rotunda and everything you get a lot of requests for yeah I feel like people ask me to and I want to be able to answer that part of the if I could to part of the visioning for a larger capital sorry

fundraising campaign for central would be to create a more robust kind of conference and event space it's centennial hall we've seen libraries around the country that really use their theaters in a

way that's more robust than us we would need to make some technology investments and try to you know turn the money back into those spaces or use that capital campaign to really st. Louis public

library is a great example of a really well renovated historic library okay alderwoman more and then alderman spiker thank you so much madam chair I just have a few more just a couple more questions

and not sure if you have any insight on this I know that we were looking for or we're continuing our search for a library director do we have a timeline on when that is anticipated to sort of be

wrapped up or is they still looking so that's a cabinet appointments and the library was not involved in the previous recruitment but we are going to meet with the ER and the mayor's office to develop

what we think is a timeline and a process that might match thank you and in regards to you know when we talk about just service areas and the reach of our libraries seeing that capital branch library

will be closing how do you all anticipate supporting services particularly I think alderman west moreland has no libraries in his district I know he sits up against Tosa and so you know I know a lot

of those residents may use the Tosa library but how do we plan to support that particular quadrant of the city that now will have no services and again we're pushing folks about a mile you know up the

street but there's still a large subset of residents that will that's further that will be further west that will not have necessarily access to the libraries what do you all plan on how do you all

plan on navigating that I think I would say that the community engagement planning that we're doing right now involves the whole quadrant so we're going to be looking for partners and community groups

to stage you know multiple community engagement sessions to sort of find out what the challenges are to navigating to midtown and also you know even do use these other county systems and tell us why I

think those will be good opportunities for us to get feedback from the community on that and on what the challenges might be I haven't talked with ha about this in detail but there could be some sort

of outreach focus I think you know we in libraries in general there's a lot of focus on brick and mortar and rightly so because our buildings are welcoming third spaces but I think the growth for

libraries to me from systems I've worked with and is really an outreach so for example pop up libraries at the Y we've done that libraries and laundromat where we're actually literally meeting people

where they are because when folks come to the library they're coming to our space but when we bring the library to them so that's really an area I think we can really really expand and grow and I

think it also relates as we talk about Sunday conversations if you know we don't have a Sunday location that's open in a certain area that actually frees some of our staff to think potentially maybe

we'll go to the farmers market set up a story time there maybe we'll bring a collection to where we know people are out and about while they're off with their kiddos so I think there's just a lot of

ways that we can explore I remember watching the hearing from last year Alderman Spiker talked about well how do we what are we doing about technology access about AI how do we incorporate that we're

certainly looking and exploring what other systems are doing what technology is available Dakota library in Minnesota for example has a fully self-service after-hour access to their spaces into their

collection Contra Costa library in California has Sundays but Sundays only limited but and staffless so there are models that we can explore as we have these conversations but and we're excited to

look at ways to do that awesome very interesting I love the I love all of those ideas lastly do do do oh is it possible I know that we have a map of the library really quick how would you think about

like where the library is located and the service area do you look at it as like well the service area is it a mile radius or how do you all do the service area for a library it's typically a one to

two mile radius that we've mapped out and we map it out against the McPherson the other county library systems as well okay some areas might stretch to three good hope I think is pretty much in a

pretty big geographical area on its own okay yeah is it possible to send us a map with those sort you know I know where all the libraries are but with that sort of the GI because then physically it

gives me an opportunity to see where are we you know worth sort of the missing links that would be amazing for sure and that is all I have thank you all so much thank you Madam Chair thank you

Alderman Moore Alderman Scott Spiker thank you and thanks for addressing the question that you knew I was gonna ask about use of AI and other technology more generally in the library world I guess

going back to something the chair said at the beginning so Sunday hours were introduced the mayor you know wasn't necessarily a fan of them initially it wasn't in his original proposed budget and

that's why it was scaled back the next year to just central again until again push forward but if people are feeling a push and pull there there is one here the council keeps putting hundreds of

thousand towards the libraries and then in the end you end up with not the service so if it were a priority then we might be looking at alternative staffing models that were a little more radical than

those we've considered so I guess my question relating to the technology thing is were there any other less costly staffing or scheduling alternatives that were considered I know when director Johnson

had considered pre act 12 you know situations where we might have a service branch open without being fully staffed with librarians or something like that so have you looked at other ways to keep the

libraries open say certain times when maybe a full compliment might not be employed for that and whether you have a reference person who's accessible remotely to multiple branches or what have you has

any of that been explored too deeply I'm I'll let her speak to that more specifically I think in the models that and I've also been in a conference this year were they a county Colorado library system

was purely remote there are some investments that we'd have to make to like our card reader door control systems where you're capturing like the library patron information when they're logging into

the space and certainly CERC and custodial people will need to sweep through on a daily basis but certainly a low staffing model so we have not costed those out for the budget yet because we've been

busy implementing Sunday hours and then thinking something quite so radical initially but we had I thought even last year about having remote access to some of the key people that maybe you don't need

it all of the branches but have remote portal as it were to access some of those services branch yeah so just if I may add one of the things that we're really working to build in public services is a

more robust virtual reference and that includes virtual chat email in real time currently Central Library is the only one that staffs it and it's only on weekdays we are wanting to build that out to

Sundays as well and also have branch participation we're finding that certain users I would probably think of myself as one with like the idea of having a virtual option available so that if we can't

come in we can still ask our reference question of a biz business and technology librarian or if there's a special collections question we can still ask them ask those subject matter experts so we're

really expanding virtual our virtual presence to be in some ways a de facto 14th branch that doesn't require brick and mortar or and you can see budget just a lot of expertise and what the technology

that we already currently have and just expanding it okay and then I know this six twenty nine figure was mentioned earlier I think that was the I pulled up the budget amendment from last year that

would have added the that would have added Sunday for the four branches and only part of the year for two of those four so we play this game and look at what would the cost be for twenty seven

understanding director Kovac's point that would cover twenty seven but then you have to live in twenty eight and twenty nine two what kind of figures are we talking about to have four branches and

twenty seven instead of just two is that a number is that looking at the twelve at the one to five hours yeah the one I'd have it broken out both the ten to five and the one to five but the one to

five was originally what we had suggested when we initially it's about two thousand dollars plus fringes but give me for the two brand I had some numbers sort of roughly cost out before the hearing

and we would want to be more details yeah I mean we're definitely expecting amendments so we'll these are calculations we have we have rough numbers on the difference between the request and the

proposed depending on which and the hours have shifted a bit you know ten to five one to five so if there's a request for that we will work with the library to come up with the best number I don't

know if we have the exact number right okay do you have a ballpark now because surely it's not a shock that we've done it the last two years that we've tried to do it maybe a third year and to simply

go back to four branches would be basically reversal the six hundred eighty six thousand as I said four amendments we do calculate fringe a little differently so it might be slightly different but it

would be in that same ballpark why would it be wait over what we funded though was four for twenty six now only half a year for two so you'd have to fund basically like you didn't know but the request

was for a full year request was for a full year for four so basically undoing the changes that were made from the request the proposed budget okay so and that number you think is in the ballpark of

six hundred thousand six hundred eighty thousand give or take yep six hundred yeah you put six eighty six or whatever in there and that would be to add from what was funded last year to additional

branches so the cost to continue is so significant you're saying well a full year yeah because last year we're going to a full year and two but the increase is far more than just two at the same cost

for twenty twenty six so that whatever would be charged for those salaries in twenty twenty seven must be substantial enough to account for that difference there were some changes in how the library

is staffing some days from what was initially put into that amendment now and the biggest difference is that there are the four positions to custodial and to security that in the amendment were

unfunded ox positions and have turned out to really be necessary to maintain Sunday hours they really can't operate without them so four positions that basically didn't make it into the amendment that

in retrospect should have but they weren't in there so that's four new positions and their salaries and their fringe benefits and when the library proposed a new staffing model they did warn us and I

think one the council that hey we might need to tweak this as we go to make sure it works so there are there it's not exactly going to be it's not just the races in the half year full year there's

some nuances to the how the staffing model is evolving to meet reality okay our HR team was really creative working with public services to see if we could get folks to shift from to shift their

schedules voluntarily to work weekends or Saturdays and Sundays and we also explored a few folks that might want to just work Sundays you know people that are from library systems around the county

and so we've found some cheaper ways to fund Sundays through a handful of temp staff that just want to work extra hours on a Sunday not in our not on our team but outside of the organization and I try

really hard hard not to be a dogmatic person I want to see what that actual data shows when we've done a sufficient outreach but I guess I agree with the chair like we've hardly given this a chance

we're making an evaluation based on that extremely limited data so okay thank you we did ask about it in the budget survey too we did ask about it in the budget survey which I know you discount but it

was another data point okay well I did my own survey too but did okay would it help you if we allocated more funding for marketing for the Sunday then so we'd have a more robust like a real year of it

like is that do you or I guess let me rephrase it do you feel that you gave it a hundred percent of marketing possible or maybe there wasn't we should have had an you know an accompanying you know man

would that mandate like should there have been more marketing money I would want to go back to the team and figure out how we launched yeah and make sure that you know if there are ways to activate

the launches a little more effectively we we could look at that I'd like to come up with a plan I know that they were pretty consistent on the socials and in all the ways that they're reaching the

staff but the idea of an activation event might make sense an event or even like I can only speak from Milwaukee Public Schools but we get a parent newsletter every week that we must read it's like if

you miss something it's like a big deal I've missed like field trips and stuff and I feel like that's an instant way to get in people like most you know I mean like you're in thousands and it's not

the only one is just one that I'm aware of second of all I'm also just one last thing at least for me on the Sunday stuff when we did the budget amendment last year did did we have Mitchell starting

in September thought we had Mitchell starting in July that is correct it was budgeted for two branches to start in July due to the realities of actually getting these up and running there was a slight

delay in getting the fourth branch up and running that was operational not budgetary I don't remember the communication on that but like those like like a lot of check John's emails what was that I

can check the announcements that came through I remember seeing it was opening in September but I also was like at the time thinking it should have been July so I guess what happened to that money

then because we had budgeted for two full months of that is that being carried over that's sitting in our salary account and will be discussed as part of the year and considering apply that to the

amendment for the restoration amendment would that be like if I do an amendment on restoration would that carryover help with there may not be carryover available so carryover is only available if

there is balance at the end of the year because of the raises for example salaries are running high in most departments so there may not be the carryover available you think there might be okay what

what what vacancy do we have right now don't we have like 15% vacancy yeah we're not double digits for it about 9% yeah we've really made a lot of progress and keep getting our positions filled I'm

happy to hear that and you're clearly hiring from within the city which is awesome okay well we'll figure it out the is do you already budget for those pop-up library experiences no those are some of

the conversations that I'm having with my team as to how we can do outreach but so the answer is no I don't think that it should be in lieu of like a Sunday hour but I do think there's so many

opportunities I had a pop-up library experience at the I think chill on the hill and people loved it and I saw people getting library cards it was just very easy and accessible it wasn't like the old

bookmobile it was just like you know a stand but I saw people taking things out and like renewing their library cards and I thought it was awesome and we just found out at least I did that the mobile

survive a live house is like also easy to be booked so like those are just two experiences that might you know be able to be worked together I know it sounds a little bit strange on the play date

thing too I think that we had wanted to go to the Daniel tiger experience getting people even like the big Frank concert in the doors is I mean if you ask any other like even like a nonprofit is so

important like it might be that one moment where perhaps a child that hadn't been in central libraries saw it and then like wants that library card I think you know I dream of a day where every

Milwaukee and has a library I know they have access to it but has a library card you know so powerful that night was you know all hands on deck for the administrative and executive team we were all

there for the whole thing it was a really just heartfelt warm brilliant night and I was sitting at the door a couple of for a couple hours and you could see kids you know it was at all ages show

walking into the rotunda and just like yeah taking out the cameras and taking pictures of that beautiful space and so yeah we're we're excited to see these successes and expand them the programming

team is developing now a music in the stacks series we've got three more artists one already came through MLK we've got someone coming to central the hiccykits hiccykits hiccykits some other singer

songwriters dresses cats definitely come very cool alright second second cat reference of the day so we're focused on enhancing these programs when we see that they're successful I think it's great

and I know you know people are looking for positive things to do the EV chargers have are those being installed this year in your parking lots actually I was I was watching the hearing last year and I

was like I have to call Eric oh I just did I know I was advocating for you to see part of that revenue as well so okay I think that covers my the only thing on your early literacy hubs I'm interested

to see when maybe when we have that discussion about the science of reading and that's the same thing that our Milwaukee Public Schools are investing in have seen a positive result so that is the way

to go I think it's amazing I'd like to understand what your early metrics are for the early literacy hubs I think that's I think what happens sometimes in these hearings is like again we all have

different metrics and until we have alignment that's my favorite word on those metrics we're just gonna have different experiences and they could lead to different expectations so I want to encourage

more and more to share some of those metrics me you saw the like disconnect on the Sunday thing a little bit that's just we're coming at it in a different way so I think it's important to have those

we'll do our final two members here all the member Gellis and then all the woman cogs if she has any questions all the member Gellis thank you very much so last year we had a lot of vacancies from

custodians and security that's largely been resolved yes and some of those positions were reallocated but you have the staff to do those functions that you need generally if you were to one of the

central libraries a very big facility one of the big features of it is the auditorium Centennial Hall how often is that used by the community or rented I will get to the rental numbers I know it's you

know monthly and relatively robust we have three events there author events there this month which is exciting actually in these two weeks so we partner with Boswell books we partner with other

community organizations and we've got some big name authors coming through this this week and next week but those are those are nonprofits or how who can who can rent from rent out Centennial Hall

anybody can rent out Centennial Hall we have a vetting process if it seems like it's a commercial but but there's a does a commercial purpose pay more or okay is there a historic preservation fee

that's added to the rental costs that would that could be designated and segregated to a special fund that would help preserve and protect the facility if you if you buy a ticket if you buy a ticket

across across the street at perhaps theatre beautifully historically preserved historic and preserve part of our city's history each ticket pays a buck or two for that right that is very interesting

we don't want to charge we don't have a surcharge for rent for borrowing library books certainly but if we're using the facility for something other than the core purpose of the library I think it's

wholly appropriate to ask those renters those non non non-profits or even the nonprofits might want to contribute something maybe at a smaller scale but I think it's wholly appropriate to ask for a

contribution of something to help preserve preserve the building the fund the fundraising assessment that we're doing is really looking deeply at what other systems are doing in that area so yes we

don't want to charge people to use our resources and our materials but if there's special access or special events special things there are things that we really want to explore in 2027 to get our

revenue say something no I was like you were going to jump in I was but I'm thinking better of it fair enough how has how have external partnerships with other notable organizations in the city been

in the last year are you partnering with the Bucks with the Brewers any other organizations that are popular we get a significant amount of money from the Brewers Foundation annually to fund the

summer reading program summer reading resources are money's great but don't get me wrong but did the Brewers show up Brewers I mean I think they're a little busy right now they're a little busy right

now yeah so we I mean we work with MSOE we bring you know those kinds of partners come in and perform in our spaces perform music oh okay I said MSOE and I meant to say and engineers playing a

computer especially with like the new director at the Art Museum the Public Museum expanding and growing next next year I think they plan to open their space we're in some conversations to get the

library front and center as a cultural institution and kind of at the table with our big partners we do we did some speaking engagements at the paps they asked us to come in and talk about at the rep

at the rep yes so we do get invitation to come speak in our professional capacity so the rep did they had a performance of flash dance is it flash dance and Carly actually spoke there and it was about

censorship very apt for a librarian especially one in collections to talk about so we are building those connections and those partnerships I would also say that some of our most important and

impactful partnerships are with our fellow city agencies we do a lot of work with the health department and some of our non-profit street angels we're hosting showers mobile showers in some of our

spaces we're partnering with the family peace center to have services there so we're having a spectrum of partnerships that are about cultural cultural connections but also very real everyday life

services so that's where I came from the latest system is in Virginia and I will say as someone relatively new to Milwaukee and Milwaukee Public Library I have been an admirer of this system and the

type of reach and work that the system is doing for example the library show I will say at my previous system we would not have that we would think of it as risky whatever that means right but for us

to take that leap and say yeah we are having a rap show to connect with people in our spaces that is so immense and of course you know I got on my phone and took pictures and sent it all to my folks

so I'm just really proud of the work that I've seen and the potential that NPL has and for line management Hans and our team members were running out and getting cases of water bottles so we could

hand them out to the folks that were waiting in line I mean it was really an all hands on deck and especially the social media team for developing those relationships amazing cool and lastly I wanted

to ask about social media metrics it's without question that the library's been incredibly successful with engagement do you have any data you can share with you know what the reach is from a social

or a public media perspective I'll bring it back to Melissa Howard are you please introduce yourself but are you the one responsible for social the social media from the library I am not so I get to

lead an incredible team who does all of the social media they are very small but very mighty so I don't have any of the data numbers in front of me I can provide that but I can give you a little bit

of oh yeah but use the microphone too so that friends at home you too we'll see so Joey is one also on social media team so it does data and social media so in 2026 to date we've had over 14 million

impressions across our social media platforms so those are just numbers but I think the one thing that I'd love to point out is when we did our king opening the other year or last year we reached out

to a lot of local creators and we're really leaning into like how do we work with other people to amplify the work that we're doing that effort alone reached more than 5 million people but it also

created those relationships it was almost like a spark of magic that really kind of brought other people to us wanting to work with us which really did directly lead to that library show so the

numbers are great but I think some of the stories translating to real engagement real local partnerships people are finding us reaching out and wanting to do more but it's also really helping us even

reach more people so you know with those library cards like again just the numbers are great but the people who signed up for library cards that night they came back and so we are also looking at our

people just coming in for that first time getting you know amazed at it and yes they are but we really care about that ongoing engagement and how do we keep that sustained so that's a lot of the work

that we're doing but again very small very mighty but it's very exciting so so while I don't do it I do get to create the environment for it so please pass along our congratulations and kudos to the

amazing thank you okay thank you um alderwoman cogs we're in our final questions here alderman mille le cogs thank you on the social media side are you guys allowed to be monetized and if so are you

monetized oh I'm thinking about working with the city attorney to look at what the parameters of that might be along with the budget office and the teams you know we we did monetize facebook at one

point and we're using the revenues for that to go back into props and you know little bits to enhance the social media but alder i did talk to the city budget director briefly this morning about it

and made a call to the city turner's office recalling that that question did come up last year um so we'll look into it okay um in the lrb write-up it speaks to link 32 of vacancies and it says that

seven of those vacancies are being eliminated in the proposed budget that some are also currently being recruited for but the others are being evaluated how many of the remaining 25 positions are

currently being evaluated and when will that evaluation be complete hang on one second let me grab my vacancy sheets so on the table um with the vacancy sheets that you would have seen we're holding

we're holding 14 for the budget um as opposed to seven and i think that may be because the quantity of the counts i would i'll go back over that um with the lrb person if it's helpful we're showing 33

total vacancies 14 being held for budget and the ones that are i'm not sure which um being evaluated yeah i'm not sure what that language from lrb means but those positions that you know they're not

going to fill a position that the mayor's proposing cutting obviously if the council takes action to restore funding for positions they would resume recruitment so i guess just let me ask it in a

different way then because i assume when they say are being evaluated that they're looking at additional ones that may end up being cut as well um so are there aside from the seven or higher meaning

um that this budget eliminates out of the 32 33 are there any additional ones that may also be eliminated i mean the vacancies tell you if people are in them or not the actual funded position change

do you have that nathaniel or we can we can get you that in more detail i mean total the budget adds four positions um and 0.9 ftes from 2026 but there's been a lot of positions shifted um or they

were you know reclassified so that may be included in those 32 doesn't mean they're being evaluated for elimination however all right thank you that's all i have madam chair thank you alderwoman cogs

alderwoman pratt or alderwoman taylor any questions for the library uh thank you so much um madam chair i don't really have any questions i think they did a great job of answering the questions um

regarding the library hours and i mean you guys did a great job to of proposing those questions so um but i would like to say that i am on the library board as well and it has been such a pleasure

serving um with these fine ladies and others that that are um there uh that i think that they do such a thoughtful job of just covering all their bases with um just reaching out um to the public and

finding ways of getting people engaged um so i just think that with those uh sunday hours that you know it just makes it all the more better with the use of the facility it just makes it all the more

better um especially as beautiful as the building is when you first walk in um i just think that we've done you know just such a great job and and uh just serving on the library board and having those

extensive discussions on um the i happen to be on the building and development committee which um just does a a great job and just really thinking through all the different aspects of what is needed

um to make sure that we have quality and that um as as the king library you know all the new technology that goes into um really making a space inviting for the public um so just coming into that 21st

century i really appreciate everything that the library staff is doing and so um thank you to my colleagues for such thoughtful questions and thank you to the library um staff members that have uh

come with all your answers thank you thank you alderwoman any other alderwoman pratt did you have anything yes yes please good afternoon quickly um i also sell on the library board and the daughter of

a librarian and mother of a soon-to-be librarian so have a unique perspective when it comes to sunday hours because i am probably looking from the position of employees um and librarians who have to

work those hours so i do encourage my colleagues to do the same and while we're pushing it that we factor in what the people who have to work those hours want what's best for employee morale um and i

think they're doing a great job as it goes right now it's about our best service model and how do we best serve the employees of the library um they're already doing a phenomenal job but we should not

be um i know i just think it's a lot and i'm i know it's a lot for us to close two branches or we were looking to go to fourth um but if employees are saying that's what's best for them and their

wellness and mental health and the numbers that we see in front of us are justifying that i think it makes sense so thank you okay thank you alderwoman pratt um i just had an additional question the i

thought we had it like um and i don't know the proper word for it but like a vending pickup machine so like i know sometimes you put things on a hold and then um there's a little bit of a limited hour

obviously on saturday depending where you're at um is there an ability to pick up at your local library if it had that machine on sundays yes if that machine were in service is there one at tippy

canoe is that the one i'm thinking about there's one at east east yeah um we are having some vendor challenges with that um that are actively being reviewed with our it team just to you know the

technology is was new and is a little bit challenging but we're we're actively working to get that back up and there are a few that came through mcflis as grants to the mcflis partner yeah

organizations i do still think there is you know just different library services we might be able to offer um in more places and um i i think i've made a request to the department of innovation as

well um to continue to look at that but i i know you guys are on top of it you're looking at all these i mean you're even citing international models which is pretty cool um so thank you anything else

alderman spiker alderman more alderman spiker yeah just a couple quick follow-ups to things that were touched on so the chair spoke of metrics i do remember she sponsored a file which i was co-sponsor

of calling for quarterly reports to the council on metrics um has that been delivered maybe i missed those emails or uh we would be happy to provide those for you quarterly i believe there was some

action by the city attorney removing the footnotes from some of the departments because of our statutory wisconsin statutory structure but i need to revisit that is that correct well we passed the

resolution and the position is a cabinet position so they are supposed to do that yeah i can't speak from our predecessor i'm sure if we ask you forcefully in a resolution to do something i will do it

if you ask me nicely i always do without a resume i'm teasing and then um alderman regales had mentioned centennial hall and rentals there and um i think it was part of the greater mawaki foundation

there's in young study a while back that they they said maybe like a million in revenue could be sitting on the table there have you guys look have you all looked at that study and some of the more

specific recommendations relating there i would love to get my hands on that study it's not something i'm familiar with yeah it was sponsored by i mean that was from a few years ago oh that i was

participating in i think it would require some investment initially but again we're looking at ways to get that investment from our through our foundation and our fundraising okay yeah that would just

don't want that thanks sitting on a shelf for um and then uh alderman cogs had mentioned the the positions so seven um overall there's a net four positions gained in this budget right um if the sunday

hours went away and two of the branches that have sunday hours didn't anymore where would that staff go would they just go back into the library collective do you mean if the if we went to just

central for sundays is that what you're asking about no if it went the proposed budget has central plus two correct there are currently two more in addition to that if those two more went away where

would those staff so that's why we're holding the vacancies We're working carefully with our HR team as positions become vacant, we're just holding them. Are you asking if we went to just central and

no branches, would there be layoffs? No, what are you asking? No, so I think I understand your question. Right now, as you heard, the library staff are on a rotation, so rotation would just get

extended, perhaps, it wouldn't result in any layoffs, and all those people would have positions currently, they don't work every Sunday right now, with the exception of a couple temp positions, that

those are just handful of temp positions. Yeah, no, I thought it was baked in that there wouldn't be layoffs and the vacancy thing would be controlling of that, but would they be doing work that,

they'd basically be slotting into libraries where vacancies pop up? In their titles, like we're tracking it very carefully and closely. Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, I said quick, so those are my quick

questions. Okay, Madam Chair. Just really quick, just the relationship of the library foundation, is that a separate entity than the board and then the city staff? Yes, they're a separate 501c3. Got

it, and they're, tell us the role really quick of the library foundation. They are the fundraising arm of the Milwaukee Public Library, and so their sole purpose is to raise funds for the Milwaukee

Public Library in their memorandum. Awesome, and I wanna, look, I'm giving shout outs here, but I know that the MLK library had a wall where they did some fundraising for that, I thought it was really

cool. I cannot wait to stop by and see my name, it's actually an honor, not even my name, it's an honor of my mom that passed away, she was an avid reader and she loved the libraries and made us go

all the time, so I definitely have fond memories of that, so can't wait to go and visit. We had a really lovely celebration for donors there on the fifth hall, I was able to be there and have fun, I

was at the public hearing. Yeah, that's where we were, I missed it, I was invited and I hate that I couldn't attend, but I heard it was great. But it was a really lovely and lively event and lots of

great donors. I love that. We have a saxophone player, so that's fabulous. Thank you for that. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. The two additional libraries, the branches, other than the central for

Sunday, is that for the full year, 1 to 5 p.m. Any other questions or comments on the Milwaukee Public Library? Seeing and hearing none, thank you so much for your work and your service. That

concludes your department for today. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be following up to see if you want more meetings to the team. Okay. I did have some meetings scheduled, but I think they got confused.

Oh, okay. Well, a lot of us had a hard time doing meetings and budget hearings at the same time, but soonish. I'll prepare something for you. Okay, great. Please make your way up. Department of

Employee Relations when you can. Thank you. And vegan muffins. I know you had a muffin. It was delicious. So vegan muffins. A little tiny muffin. This muffin is so good. I appreciate you. This is

really good. Where'd you get this from? Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love

Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I'm so proud of Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. I love Outpost. We're at the point where we're talking

about snacks, so. Oh, I can imagine. I had cheese and crackers for lunch. Here you go. Oh my God. So I understand. Yep. Give me one more minute. Jackie, I want to make sure everybody's kind of

situated here. Okay. We are now going to begin. Wait, did we have four? Malay Lay's on line. Oh, three. Yep. Yep. Gotcha. So we are now going to begin with Department of Employee Relations, though.

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Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and

committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee.

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee. Long-term disability insurance is where most of this movement is, and that's just

mostly due to the fact that as salaries for the city increase, so will long-term disability insurance. Healthcare accounts, a 4% increase, or almost nearly 5 million from last year, all of that's in

the EPO. And workers comp, going down slightly, I have 150,000 just to reflect last year's actuals. Quickly budget by service. You can see the breakdown of employee relations staffing compensation and

workers compensation. And then lastly, revenues are up slightly with 54,000 from last year. And with that, I'd like to hand it off to the department. All right, thank you. Welcome Director Carter.

Good afternoon. Jackie Q. Carter, Director of Employee Relations, here joined by the senior leadership team, our budget support, and several other members of the employee relations staff. So we'll

start with our core services. DER's primary mission is to serve the HR needs of the city. So we service all departments and support those departments that we don't. Some departments are serviced by

the Fire and Police Commission, but we do support them in various ways through postings and different tasks that we administer for the city. So you kind of see we have four main functions, well, five

really, but the administration department, it's kind of the oversight for all of the functions. So that's where the executive leadership and administrative support resides. We work with the rest of

the divisions on policy development and are also take lead on most of the stakeholder engagement. There is a lot of overlap though. So there are some of these things happening in the other divisions

as well. So staffing services is responsible for recruitment, selection, certification. They're doing all the hiring. A lot of the public facing activities with DER comes out of staffing when it comes

to compensation. And for staffing, I want to acknowledge Kristin Urban is the manager for that team for compensation and pay services. That is under Andrea Knickerbocker. And they do all of the job

classification and market assessments. So when we talk about market studies and re-classes and special rate requests and all those things, Andrea's team is the one who is doing the analysis to make

sure that those things are aligned and appropriate. Employee benefits is led by Ms. Molly Keene. They are responsible for benefit plan design and administration, making sure that the city's employees

have competitive benefits, that we can be competitive as an employer and also balancing the financial resources of the city when it comes to that. Labor relations and compliance is kind of a combined

team. That is Nicole Fleck, who is our labor negotiator, and Catherine Holiday, who is the compliance officer. And so they deal with a lot of the collective bargaining, complaints and grievances. So

if something is not -- an employee has a disagreement or a misunderstanding about how something should go, they're typically going to reach out to Nicole or Catherine and that team. Next slide,

please. In terms of our service highlights and how we measure what we do, one of the things that is often discussed is how long it takes to get someone in to work for the city. And so we measure that

by the average days to establish an eligible list from an open and competitive recruitment. And that means that we are recruiting from the outside, right? So starting brand new, somebody who does not

yet work for the city. And people who do work for the city are also eligible for these types of postings, but it's particularly open to anybody. And so in 2024, we were at 84 days, this year in 2026,

year to date, we're at 61, we think we're going to get to 60 by the end of the year. A lot of that work is a credit to Ms. Kristin Urban and her team, really trying to tighten things up. And we'll be

doing some additional work on that. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. General city job applications received. You can see they're processing a number of different applications. We are happy

to say we are seeing -- I know the numbers say something different, and that has to do with retention. But when we are posting, there were positions where we weren't seeing very many -- we were seeing

a limited number of applicants, and now we're seeing a large number. So we'll have some examples of that as well. Request for reinstatement. So those are employees who have left the city and have

requested to come back. They're allowed to do so if the department agrees to accept them back. And so you'll see in year to date, right now we have 39 of those that have happened in 2026. On the

bottom, those measures are associated with the benefits division. And so one of the things that Molly and her team have worked on is establishing primary care at the workplace clinic. We know that the

workplace clinic was established a number of years ago in effort to try to reduce some of the costs associated with health care. And so now offering employees the opportunity to have a primary care

service right across the street or right downtown, because not everybody works in city hall complex. That's something that they'll continue to market. The benefits team has also developed 22 on-demand

webinars to help people understand things that are going on, and Molly will be able to share with you some additional examples about that. We didn't list them here. 75 employees this year have been --

or since 2025 -- have been certified in mental health first aid. Being able to be a first responder for someone who might be having a mental health episode, being able to assist them so that they can

get the assistance they need. So that 75 employees, a number of people from the employee relations team have gone through that as well. And then 23 bridge to work placement. That program is associated

with our workers compensation program. And so it's aimed at injured workers being able to get them into a placement that's light duty that keeps them active, keeps them on the payroll, and it's an

effort to try to get them back to work sooner. Next slide, please. So for 2027 and even beyond, one of the things that I've touted with the team is really getting back to basics. We had our all staff

meeting a few weeks ago and really acknowledged that this team has really had a lot of change in the last few years. I am the fourth director in the last six years that they've had. And so they've

done a lot of work, and I will say a great job of really keeping the work going, making sure that the department's needs were met, that the city's needs were met. And so that involved people kind of

taking on extra responsibilities, really getting in and ensuring that none of the balls were dropped. And so what we want to do now is really look at what are we doing in all the different divisions?

Are we doing things that maybe should align with something else? And how can we collaborate more? So we stated that around unifying on the basics of what we do. And not saying that we're going to

offer basic level service, but really getting back to the foundation of who we are as a department. So how we present as a department, making sure that we are all on the same page, presenting unified,

right? How we communicate with our stakeholders. And when we think about our stakeholders, we're talking about public officials, departments, all the HR staff, the employees, candidates who are

looking to work for the city, and then some of our vendors and partners who we work with to offer the services that we have to offer to employees. We talk about how we support employees citywide. When

we were doing the 2026 employee engagement survey, I was able to get out into the field and really meet directly with employees and talk to them about why it was important for them to participate. And

one of the things that came up frequently at these visits was they really didn't understand the difference between DER and the department HR. And so we really want to clean that up and really make

sure that we are communicating citywide so they're clear about who they can come to and what we offer them. So also letting them know what policies there are that exist to support the work that they

do and meet the needs that they have. We are focused on organizing around common goals. We've done a lot of that work already. Some collaboration has happened within the department and outside. The

staffing division and compensation division work together to have monthly meetings with the departments to talk about what's coming so that we can be more proactive and not reactive to the things that

they need. And then also doing cross training. The way that we have operated, at least since I've been here, has been that folks will kind of focus on the work that they do in their division. And this

team is really committed to making sure that we are training our folks so that they're ready to support and be prepared to step in when we have maybe some turnover. Somebody grows up as we're

upskilling and people move on having somebody who's able to step in so that we don't have service gaps. Lastly, it's standing on what is written. And what I mean by that is we are a policy department,

right? We service the service and administrative function. And so a lot of what we do is guided by rules and laws and ordinances. So really getting back to knowing why we do it, what ordinance or what

law, what rule is it that we are following that dictates the decision that we have. So I think what we get a lot of time is people thinking that our team is just saying what they say because of how

they feel and that's not the case. We have rules and laws that we have to follow. And so we want to make sure that we not only understand the why, not just kind of carrying on and doing what I learned

from the person who trained me, but I need to know the why behind what I'm doing as well. Because that puts us in a better position to be able to explain that to the people that we're servicing. Part

of that is documenting our policies and procedures. We've had a few positions that have turned over already this year. And we learned immediately like there were some things that somebody just did it,

right? And we hadn't thought about it. And so we're doing a better job of making sure that we have things documented so that when we do have those, you know, those changes and staffing, somebody is

able to just kind of carry it on and we're not dropping the ball on anything. And that hasn't happened. I want to be clear. I'm not saying that it's happened. But it was a wake up call for us. And

then also getting to data driven decision making, right? So allowing the data to speak to us and determine how we move forward, not think, you know, coming up with what we might think is the best

idea. I think that was another thing that came out of the engagement survey is really listening to employees, understanding what they want. And so giving them the space to do that, Molly's team has

done some work with that through the I forget the name of it, the workplace, the wellness and what is the name of the group? Well, Wellness and Labor Management Committee, it's there's some other

letters in there. I'm missing, but they she meets with them on a monthly basis. Nicole Fleck also meets with representatives, employee representatives as needed, as does a number of other members of

our team. So really speaking to them based on or getting the information from them to determine what we do and supporting it again with the policies and the rules that we must follow. Next slide. So

in 2027, a couple of the things that you'll see that will be different training and development DER is tasked based on Chapter 350 with making sure that employees are trained and looking for ways to

ensure that their development continues that they're not just here, you know, just get in the job and do it, but really looking at ways to always be better. And so you'll see the training and

development coordinator from the Department of Administration will now be part of DER team. And we've already been doing some collaborative work with that group. We submitted for the file a memo that

really gets into some details about the work of all of the divisions. And one of the things we mentioned in there is that we have been working with the mayor's office with the Department of

Administration to develop some training programs that we've already rolled out. And we'll continue to do that work as we kind of see needs to address those. We are also drafting a citywide

compensation policy. We have a draft right now and the intent of that is to really clarify and create consistency that guides the way that we make decisions around compensation. You may remember last

year there was talk about is this across the board? Is this are we moving the range and all these things? And so we really want to spell those things out so that folks know when they're making the

decision, this is what that decision means. And so that will be coming to you in the coming months once we have a final draft. We're doing more cross departmental collaboration. We talked about that a

little bit already, but really have some standing meetings with departments. The staffing and compensation division does that. And I also do that with department heads where we're meeting again,

trying to be more proactive and not reacting to things and really thinking creatively about how we work together. This committee and I think the full council really supported having a handle on some

of those chronically vacant positions. So those are the kinds of conversations that are happening at these meetings. New employee orientation is coming back in person in 2027. Again as we talk with

employees, one of the things that we get a lot of feedback on from employees and the HR staff that we work with is they're not all they don't always catch what they need when those meetings are held

virtually. And so Molly's team and Kristen's team is working on bringing those orientations back to in person. I don't know if y'all remember or how it was, if you've been here long enough, you

probably remember that there was a time where you spend a whole day in orientation just going through all the benefits, all the things that you needed to know for city employment. And so we're going

to model that. I don't know that it'll be all day, but we really want to hammer home what it means to work for the city and all the things that we offer for employees. And I think that'll help with

some of our retention. And then we'll also be exploring some opportunities for some additional efficiencies and innovation. We know that the work day project is, you know, in, I mean, our staff is

knee deep in it right along with the comptroller's team. We are working side by side to really get that program off the ground. And once that happens, we're going to be looking for some additional

ways to support innovation and efficiencies, not just for our team, but for citywide operations. And so with that, I think we can go to our demographics and I'll open for questions. Okay. Fantastic.

We will begin with member questions now. And for this department, we start on my right with Alderman Peter Bergales. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for my, for the first round, I want, I wanted to

just focus on some changes in staffing and notably benefits division went from 15 employees to 11, which I can kind of understand, but then the administrative or the head of the department went from 8

to 13. Yep. And notably one of those administrative assistants that was requested at 46,000 a year turned into an administrative services coordinator at 87,000 a year. What kind of benefits and then

pretty much all of the new positions that were requested were proposed at a premium salary, no less than 10% higher than what was requested. So my question is what, why this reorganization at the top

of the department and what kind of benefits can the city expect from it? Sure. The, what you notice in the benefits division, there are two positions. They are the, the business operations positions

and those folks primarily handle budgeting, finance, payroll, HR, but they do a department wide. And so bringing them back to the administrative section where that's kind of oversight for the entire

department that made sense, right? The so they were functionally working for the entire, they worked for the entire department, but now this is placing them where they will report to the director

rather than the employee benefits director. So that was just a move. So those are not technically new positions when it comes to the administrative services person. The reason that we requested that

is because historically DER had two people at the front desk, right? They were the frontline customer service person for both DER and FPC because FPC doesn't have a front lobby. Those folks come to

DER and so we're servicing their folks as well. We communicate with FPC, you know, and, and we are in constant communication with them. So it's not an issue. The issue is the person who is sitting

there now has a full time job that is not customer service. And so asking for this position was really to get the get someone who was able to kind of handle that to be kind of a jack of all trades

because they're going to also support all the divisions. They can't just be well versed in staffing or compensation. They really need to know all the benefits compliance and really be able to direct

people to where they need to go. The reason that the position changed from the request to the proposed is because we also saw a, um, there was a risk that we're going to have to lay someone off. And

so we wanted to classify that position so that we wouldn't have to do that. And so that's the increase. When you look at the difference between what was requested and what was proposed, it was because

the request went in before the HR business op study was complete. And so when the proposed came out, we had to adjust to account for those increased salaries that resulted from the increase in study

because HR business ops touch many of the people in DER. So that's, that's why there was those increases. Did I miss something that you said? No, I think you covered it. I think you covered it all

pretty well. We have it. You haven't mentioned workday too much, but I did have a question about workday and maybe I'll wait till the second round. Okay. Okay. Yeah, we got to work up to that. A

little workday joke now, anything? Okay. Is it going to take half the day or the entire time? Hello? Okay. All right. Alderwoman Coggs, I had forgot last time and I don't want to make that same

mistake. Anything for Department of Employee Relations? No question. Okay. All right. Okay. Then I will step in. On page 12, what your service highlights, which I would say are kind of like a KPI.

I've done this a few times, I've made some suggestions. You can take them or not. I thought that perhaps one metric we might like in the future is how many people are participating in the Healthy

Rewards Program. I think that would be a metric I'd be interested in. Reducing reduction of vacancies or vacancies in chronically vacant areas, I guess was the kind of, not saying it's all DER, but we

do have a role to play. It's kind of a different way of saying it. You have a request for reinstatement, but I guess, personally, I would look at retention as like an overall, I mean, I look at other

private organizations and I guess, I don't know what the standard equivalent is, but three to five years, it'd be interesting to see each year, if we use that as a metric, how many people are staying

with us longer? Yeah. Okay. I don't know if that's working perfectly, but just some stuff that I know I'm interested in. Okay. So, I did see on that slide though, seemed like a little bit of a major

decline in general city job applications received. What do we think that's all about? Okay. Madam Chair and committee members, I'm Kristin Hennessy Urban. I'm the Staffing Administration Manager. We

really haven't had a decline in applications. I know we were at 13,000 for 2024, and then we went down to 11, and remember, 2024 was the year after this committee approved the trades and labor study,

so we did see a big increase in the number of applications for those types of positions, which was wonderful. 2025, actuals were down to about 11,000, and then keep in mind, this is year to date, so

this was probably the end of September for the 95-41, so I anticipate that that will climb up to 10, 11,000 by the end of the year very easily. Okay. And just to kind of move off of that, this might

be for your area too, the metric above it was actually something I wanted to bring up, so it's been kind of brought to our attention. I'm trying to figure out, but you're the place to ask. In areas

where we are in great need of services and employees to do those important services, I'm sure it was a lot of streetlight electrical services, and now it appears, but not totally sure on some of the

pothole work and street repairs. One of the things we're hearing is kind of that long process to get people on board or even probation, anything, like is there anything when we see the need, can we

kind of make any changes there temporarily, just to alter the market if need be, anything that you suggest in those areas? Yeah, we look at those areas really closely, and in fact, we just met with

operations this morning. We meet with them, if not weekly, every other week, and so we look at things like the city labor recruitment, we just did a new one for city labor, and we look at equipment

operator, which is another really big position of concern that requires a CDL, and as the committee's probably aware, there's a CDL shortage nationwide, and we've been actually, since this committee

approved the pay increases for equipment operators and that career path, we've seen a lot more applications for equipment operators. One thing that we've done, because there are more vacancies than we

have applicants, is every week we send the group of applicants we got that week to the department, and so they've reduced the turnover time by about half, and so that's been really, really effective.

City laborers department, the Department of Public Works, and they can speak to this when you meet with them, can make temporary appointments, and they work with some of the local job services in

order to do that, to give people opportunity, and the hope is that those individuals will turn around and apply for the regular job, and that does happen quite frequently. And so we just gave a

selection process for city labor, but our city labor application numbers have probably doubled in the last three years. So we are continuously working with the departments. We meet with them weekly or

every other week, so that we know exactly where they are. I think if you look at equipment operator, do we have a lot of applicants, yes. I think it's a very difficult job, as we can all imagine. It's

kind of, they're the unsung heroes of the city, and so I think we need to work with department more closely to hire the right people, because there is some degree of attrition in that job. And as you

were saying, Madam Chair, we do look at that level of attrition, and it has improved over the last year, hires from 2024. We have about 33% of those who are hired in 2024 into equipment operators

still with us, and it's up to 60% for 2025. But your point is one that's well taken because one of the metrics that we look at in staffing and that organization should look at is the attrition after

one year. And in our case, probably, it used to be after four years, you know, we would see people, if they got to four years, they were vested, right? So they would stay with us. Now it's five years,

so we should probably look at that as well. You know, are people staying? We can also look at the percentage of offers accepted. That's a big metric that I see when I look at the literature, but we

will certainly come back and report back on the attrition in the first year because I think that's key to onboarding and to a realistic perspective about what the job is. Yes, definitely. Thank you.

I'll move on now to Alderman Speicher and then Alderman Moore. Thank you, Madam Chair. With respect to the alternative work arrangement or ADA stuff, or not the ADA stuff, the alternative work

arrangement or AWA stuff. Where was the policy that you're supposed to be in three days a week? Is there any way that DER centralizes data on compliance with that, or is that just left up to the

departments? Yeah, the departments really manage that for their team. Some departments have specific days where they want folks in the office, some allow their employees to pick. So it can really

vary. We don't have a way to track that, though. Could there be a way to track that? So if we -- I guess if the council got interested in it enough to see if there was compliance, it'd be nice. I

guess we could wrangle all the departments, but is there no expectation of you guys as being a repository for that information, and if there isn't, is there a way to make it so? Yeah. Cool. Good

afternoon. Cold Flack labor negotiation. Yeah, two mics. Yeah, look at that. Yeah. Yes. Workday, once we implement that, that will track alternate work arrangements. And so that'll be a way that we

can take a look at that. Okay. Perfect segue to workday. So I know that's been a heavy lift for your department, as well as Comptroller and some others, as you mentioned. How has that impacted folks'

ability to get their day jobs, as it were, done while doing that? How close are we, if we can get it up in December, is that a close enough period of time that we're not going to reach the breaking

point for employees? We've attempted, as much as we can, to give employees who are working on that project some flexibility in terms of maybe not having deadlines be as tight for some of their other

work. I'll say many of the folks are doing double duty and really trying to keep their regular duties going while still working on it. I think right now we are in a time where there's a real focus, a

real push to work on workday. And so I think the only thing we have to offer them right now is flexibility, right, to kind of give them some leeway to be thoughtful about how we assign work,

considering how involved in the program or the implementation they are. I will say there is no evidence that the work has suffered. I am more concerned about the employees and the stress that this

project has because they want this to work and work well for the city. That's a lot of pressure for just a few departments to carry for everybody. And so let me publicly just say thank you to all

those folks who are working on it. I mean, we try and, you know, express our appreciation regularly, but I just want to be on the record. These are some hardworking folks. And I think when we think

about how we manage the work, because one of the things that we've talked about with the budget office is if, you know, when we talk about the proposed wage increase for 2027, making sure that we

don't double down on the stress of those employees by allowing a little bit of runway and not doing that pay period one. So there's things like that that we're trying to do to make sure that we don't

add additional stress to those folks. But they've got their heads down and they're going full force to make sure that we make the deadline. Right. And then with respect to recruitment, I think I may

have asked in previous years about whether what sort of coordinate outreach there is into the schools, getting folks when they're, you know, sophomore, junior, senior, knowing that the city has jobs

out there. Is there any sort of progress we've made on getting into the schools, whether they're MPS, charter choice, what have you? I can take that question, Alderman Spiker. First of all, we've

expanded, and I should say our customer departments have expanded their apprenticeships, their youth apprenticeships, which have been fantastic. And we have a really close relationship with the

apprenticeship coordinator at MPS to ensure that we are requiring the right classes and we are targeting students to come into the city as juniors and seniors in high school, which is amazing. And our

goal is let's keep them. If we are going to train them and invest in them, let's keep them. And DPW has been fantastic with this. The fire department just added another youth apprentice. So that has

been absolutely terrific. And I can also have Kwabena Marcus J. Collins, who is our diversity recruiter, speak to some of the efforts with MPS as well. Yep. I was going to bring them in if you guys

weren't, so that's awesome. All right. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and distinguished members of this committee. Kwabena Marcus J. Collins, I'm the diversity recruiter for the city. We've done a

variety of different things in terms of recruitment at all levels from a high school recruitment strategy, community based recruitment strategy and collegiate level strategy. Starting with the most

recent is most recently we have done a college tour, recruitment tour out of town. We went to six campuses in five days and did on-site interviews for our engineering intern program in which actually

just this morning our first one, which was number seven of 23 interviews we'll be doing for our engineering intern was a direct candidate from that trip. We also are working with MPS directly in a

couple different ways. Just last month I was actually at one of their teacher in services for their career services staff to make sure that they knew what to do from an interview and from a resume

completion so that they're teaching their students a way to best exemplify what they have to bring to the table and then also working with not just MPS, but even next month we'll be at charter school

on a panel, not myself, but we'll be bringing in different professionals from within the city to talk about career opportunities and pathways within the city because as we like to say at the city of

Milwaukee, we don't just work for the city. We work on the city because that work impacts over a million people every day and then from a community standpoint we are building more strategic

relationships from communities from LGBTQIA community, the Asian American community, African American community, Latino community. We are working through our ERGs to build more relationships there and

they are also managing some of those relationships so it's an opportunity for us to help develop our internal staff so I know retention was brought up earlier. That is a by a product of doing that we

are retaining people because they feel like they're being invested as leaders in the organization even though their title doesn't give them that opportunity. We also are doing very in-depth tours with

the libraries so we have a total of 14 library career and resource fairs at every single library within the city of Milwaukee and we are collaborating with different community resources in addition to

city departments to make sure that people not only have access but they're being exposed to different career opportunities as well as being empowered to apply even on site. Okay. Sounds good. And then

I have one last one and bringing as many people to the table as possible. With respect to health care, expenditure growth and some of the growths in the special purposes accounts, I know we see the

increase for this year but do we have any trend lines moving forward, we've had a number of good years containing cost but eventually the outside world catches up with us so what's that looking like

and what are we doing to kind of keep the trend line as flat as possible. Just for the record, Molly King, city of Milwaukee benefits director. Good question. The thing is with health care while we

are, it's hard to project when you're self-insured and so we can't project what someone is going to -- elements going to happen in a future year but what we can do is prepare and plan for it and so

what we do here in DER and for our city we have a robust wellness program and we talk a lot about our robust wellness program because we want to be proactive in our health care and as a result since

2016 since we've established this program and having an on-site clinic and now with primary care right across the street, able to do vaccination and robust this time of year we have our flu vaccine

program going on and things like that, we're able to mitigate certain things that we weren't -- most other companies are not able to, as a result it shows in our annual premium increase from prior

years. We've always been below the benchmark for the last -- at least from what I've looked at least 10 years so that's telling and that's because of the things we are doing and we're educating our

employees to be more proactive in bringing the service to where the employees are. >> Okay. I have some other questions but that's fine. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. All the women, Charlotte Moore.

>> Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I am going to -- I have lots of questions but I'm going to start with the easy one question. Really quick for the rein statements. So when it says actuals, are those

people that have requested a reinstatement or are those individuals that have gotten reinstated? It's on page 12 of the -- I was just confused of how did that work for the rein statements? >> Kristin

has the urban back again. Those are actual rein statements. So when someone requests rein statements, if they have civil service status and request rein statements, the department has agreed to bring

them back. So when these wages increase particularly for some of our laboring positions, equipment operator, DPW in particular had an enormous number of requests for rein statements and did not grant

all of them. So a person has to have a good work record, et cetera, in order to come back. So you do see that they did actually reinstate quite a few people. And I shouldn't just say it's DPW. It was

health department. We saw a lot of really wonderful situations where people wanted to come back. But the number of requests for rein statement is probably at least double what is granted. And I think

that's probably a good thing because it's a big deal to come back. And if you leave, you want to leave in good standing. So I think that that's reflective of being judicious and bringing people back.

But being very open to it because that's a lot of rein statements. Sticking along the same lines of employees during our budget hearing or our community hearing, lots of folks came out and talked

about, hey, we want an increase to the wage. My question is, what are we doing for our employees? Because the goal is to, if you're going to be working, we want you to work multiple years for the

city. What is -- let me see how I wrote my question. Is it the responsibility of each department to provide that pathway or that leadership development? Or does DER provide them, I don't know, with

best practices, information, whatever, right? How do we move our employees because we want you to be in a position and be skilled and be an expert and then we want you to move on? At least that's what

I assume so that someone else can get in and, you know, we sort of rinse and repeat so that we get this sort of leadership attrition. How does that -- how well are we doing that? So I think we're

doing -- I'll say fine now. I think there's some work to do. And one of the strategies with bringing the training coordinator over to DER is really so that we can work together on that. We've done

some work. We work with the mayor's office to do a leadership boot camp this year to really talk about new leaders and then people who might be next for leadership, right? The next group that we're

looking at is frontline supervisors. When we look at -- and I should also mention we'll need to get a briefing of the employee engagement results before this committee because I think there's some

information there that would be helpful. We got feedback from employees about the relationships they have with supervisors and leadership. They want to hear from us. I'll tell you, when I went into

some of those places -- and it was a lot of the field staff that we went to visit because they're not folks who are at computers looking at eNotify all day. So we went and got in front of them and

they -- you could tell the difference, right? When I first arrived, they were kind of stiff and cold and not really -- and as I talked and just let them know what we wanted to do, by the time I was

trying to go, I had a line of folks wanting to talk, right? They needed to see that. And so I think helping to educate the folks on what's available to them, we're doing some work around that. I know

that Andrea's team and the compensation team has worked with departments to do some kind of -- I don't want to say ladders because I think we've gotten away from that. But really looking at

opportunities for people to kind of progress through different job groups. That's probably not the right language Andrea will give me together. But really helping to upskill employees and give them

opportunities. But also communicating to them what the options are because for some people, they just don't know what that means. They don't know that if we -- if Kristin teams puts out something that

says transfer promotional, that that's only competing with other employees. They don't know that if it's an internal, only to the department, that that's just the folks from this department. So it's

really about them putting in, you know, throwing their hat in, taking a risk, getting some feedback, but then also us training the people who are leading them so that they're developing folks and

having the conversations to know, I've got somebody who wants to move up, how do I support them and make sure they're getting exposure to the things they're going to need to be successful in the

position that they're trying to grow into. >> Let's talk a little bit about more about that as far as that -- because that was one of my questions as far as -- because there's some positions that we

don't put out to the general public, correct? It's something that we do internally. Talk just a little bit more in depth, Jackie, about how do our employees -- like how do we prepare them for

opportunities like that? Like you say, this is something that's just -- you're competing against the folks that are in your department or maybe not in your department from wherever. I don't know how

that works, but how do we communicate that to them? >> Yeah, I think the language -- one, when we talk about this compensation policy, really giving them the language of what it means when we do this,

right? So putting the language in their hands, but also making sure that our communication is clear. The Christmas team does a great job of posting. They're doing it through social media. They're

doing -- they're doing all the things, right? People come into the office. They're talking to them all the time. So we're doing that. But I think the other part -- the folks who are leading the

employees at the front line, we've really got to arm them with the tools to be able to guide that, right? So putting them in a position where they feel empowered to say, you know what? This person

does really well at this. Let me see if we can give them some opportunity to kind of upskill that, or strengthen that. Maybe that's an opportunity for them to grow into some of these positions where

we're having a harder time. Is that something they're interested in? So having conversations with your employees to know what they want. We're encouraging -- you know, people think because we don't do

performance-based wage increases that they shouldn't be doing performance improvement. We should, right? We should be having conversations with employees, even if it's just a one-on-one to say what

are your goals, what is it that you'd like to be doing in a year, five years, whatever it is, and then how can I as your manager support you in getting there? So having those opportunities. And I

think some of the training that we're working to develop will address some of that. Did that answer your question? No, it absolutely does, and it brings me to another one where -- how do we then

address racial bias? Because when we look at some of the data and some of our front line staff are specifically people of color, but when we go up the ranks, it's -- you know, it gets white. And so

it's just -- so I'm just like, well, wait a minute, do we not have enough qualified folks and folks that have been here for years? You know, is there -- are there tools or are there ways that we work

with our work? Because, you know, if you have a supervisor or another staff that, you know, they may have an interest in somebody particular or whatever, how do we make sure that it's fair and

equitable and that that racial bias is -- again, it's a tough question, but it's a real question. Right. I think -- so a couple of things. There are, I guess, guidelines around how you promote, like

the timing in which something is posted. It has to be public. You can't just say, you know what, Kristin's great, I want you in this role. No, you have to post it in the -- even if it's an internal to

the department only. It has to be posted for, I think, was it seven days? Seven business days. Seven business days. They have to post it and give everybody an opportunity. You cannot cherry pick,

right? One of the things that we -- when we did our last quarterly personnel officer meeting, Kristin did a training -- or not really a training, a presentation through the HR persons to just let them

know -- talk to them about how we get a more diverse workforce, a more equitable opportunity for everybody, and part of that is making sure that when you have a panel, that the panel is first diverse,

right, because I can tell you, I've sat on panels where I know had I not been there, the person of color probably wouldn't have gotten an opportunity, right? And so making sure that the folks who are

picking the workforce looks like the workforce we want. So there's some of those things. Did you have anything to add? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, we're almost obsessed with that very topic in our

division and have been for many years because what we look at is not only do we want to ensure people are treated equitably, but we don't have adverse impact against women or people of color, right?

So we consistently emphasize, A, we set minimum requirements at the basic level where the person can do the job competently, and it makes us a little unpopular with departments because we're always

pushing back on minimum requirements all the time. Secondly, as Director Carter mentioned, several years ago, it was the case that a manager could say, you know, I worked with so and so a few years

ago, I have this vacancy, I'm just going to pull them over and have them work here. And we presented to the Civil Service Commission and they unanimously supported it that every position be posted.

Are there exceptions? Yes, they have to apply for that exception with me or with Jackie, and it has to be if there's an exigent need to hire, you know, sometimes that happens, but it's rare. So

several years ago, the city service rules were changed so that they have to post it for seven business days, either internally in the department or citywide transfer promotional. So we have we can

always do more. And I think state interviews will be very helpful if we can get those into the line managers, line supervisors hands, where we are asking people, what are your interests? You know,

these this is what I think your strength is. This is something that you can work on. Honestly, this is a certification you need if you want to move up. Those types of conversations are really, really

important. So it's not just about the performance appraisal. It's about how do we allow employees to grow into other roles. Excellent. And when you all receive for external sort of position and you

have hundreds of applications, are those being filtered by hand? Because obviously, yep, okay, we got to get the ones that meets the basic requirements. Or are we using, you know, something electronic

to do? How do you filter through all those applications? I'm so glad you asked. Thank you all. And the second part of that question is also communication. How do you communicate to those applicants

that have applied those applicants that got denied, etc? Absolutely. So as Kwabena Marcus J. Collins, who's here, always says we use actual intelligence, not artificial intelligence, to review our

applications. Every application is reviewed by a human being. If they're in doubt as to whether or not the person meets the requirements, they will bring in another HR rep to look over the

application. And we are looking for reasons to screen people in rather than to screen them out, absolutely. Because the burden of proof legally is on us as the employer to ensure that our minimum

requirements are job related. And so every single application is screened by us. I don't have any intention of moving to AI to do that any time soon because there is a lot of litigation out there

based on bias because AI is based upon the information we have now, right? And so it's problematic for applications. That might be different for things like benefit enrollment and things like that

where you can have a chatbot assist you with that. But I'm pretty committed to the fact that we make things equitable and fair. So yes, we are absolutely looking at every single application. If we

reject an application and say you don't meet the minimum requirements, our applicants have the right to appeal that to the City Service Commission so they get another completely unbiased opinion as to

whether or not they meet the minimum requirements. And you don't see that really anywhere else, even in other public sector entities. So did I answer your question? Oh, absolutely you did. Okay. Yeah,

thank you. Going back to employees, how do they know -- and I know we talked -- we had a chance to meet Director Carter around just employees' rights, right? How do they -- how do we work or how do we

educate them on the rights that they have if they were terminated, if they're having a challenge with a supervisor? You know, we get -- I'm sure all of us get emails all the time about, you know, how

do I address this or how do I handle this or I'm having a really challenging time with my supervisor, et cetera. How does the department do in educating our employees on their rights? So one of the

things that we do is we have forms that are consistent across the City, right? So discharge, suspension, all those on the form and they're required to give a copy to the employee, it tells them what

their rights are, if they have the right to appeal or not, what the timeline is, that's directly on the form and they are required to give a copy of that form to the employee. We also have an entire

policy page when we have opportunity to direct people to that page because I've got employees now who will email me about something and I'll always throw in there, here's some other links that you

need to know, right? So pointing them to that. I think when we talk about our efforts that we want to focus more on communication, part of it is that, right? Because there are employees who didn't

know we had an anti-harassment policy and that shouldn't be, right? I know that Catherine and Nicole do a lot of work with employees who come to them with things and so they're sharing what those

options are and helping to point employees to some of the policies and the rights that they have. We try to get it with benefits, Molly's team does some, with the orientation points them to what they

have available to them for work, Kristin's team also has a part in that. So we try to touch them as much as we can but I think bringing back the new employee orientation in person is gonna be helpful.

I think the communication efforts where we're gonna really try to streamline how we communicate as a department where we can highlight and spotlight some of the policies that we have to really explain

that to the employees and get it into their hands. I think Workday will allow it to be another tool that we can use to communicate to employees because everybody's gonna have to interact with Workday

but there won't be any more of this paper or reporting to your manager and letting them enter, they will have to be involved in that system and so that might be another avenue for us. So we're

exploring ways that we can get the information out there and do a better job of putting that information in front of employees. That's good and I'm hoping that Workday, I mean the Workday and again,

kudos to the folks and the teams of people that have been working on it. I know that it's been a labor of love but it's gonna get us to where we need to go. That's a positive side. But speaking on the

policy side, policy side of things, and I'ma yield and just a few more questions, not probation, and I'ma come back to a different question, but probation. Talk to me about what moved us from six

months to a year because there's a lot that can happen in a year requiring someone to be on probation for that period of time. And again, and I'm thinking about if I don't like you for whatever

reason, I can sort of nitpick and be like, well, you know, I'm gonna terminate you and not have the backup or the material. You know what I mean? And that's why I want us to make sure we're tight with

our, with that paperwork. Did you put it in writing? Did you, you know, all those things. What moved us from six months to 12 months for the probationary period? Because that is quite a bit of time

to, and okay, so that, and then, and then answer, I think if you move from one position to another, does your probation period start again? Depends. If you're internal. Okay. All right. So there were

many exceptions in the city service rules to the six month probationary period. Pages of exceptions of titles. And so not that that was the reason that we recommended that going to 12 months, it was

really a hue and cry from a lot of our departments and from some of our employees that a) a lot of the work is Seasonal so to see the entire cycle of someone performing the job even like city labor

Equipment operator you have to see an entire year now people can be passed on probation after nine months with good performance There is the option to pass them early. I'm sorry. Okay, so there were

many exceptions initially to the six months Leaving fewer and fewer positions that actually had this six months applying additionally, you know in in the years Since it was six months We've seen

positions go from you couldn't potentially have a position somewhere in city government where people's just are Filing papers right sitting at a desk. They're filing papers. They're doing something

wrote those days are over Everyone has a customer service role Everyone has interaction with our residents. And so allowing the time to evaluate that type of service Really, it's difficult to have

that in six months and expect the employee to train in the technical aspects of their job And those are becoming more intense as well and in the customer service. How are they treating residents? You

need in fairness. We want to give people a greater opportunity as far as the documentation Employees are evaluated at four months eight months And at twelve months and so there is a form that's used

by the supervisors If an employee is getting to into trouble, basically they might determine it unless it's something egregious that of course Generally, they're put on a performance improvement plan

And so they're informed as to what the deficiencies are and given time to correct them And so there is a lot of documentation and our compliance staff looks over every probationary period Report that

comes through to ensure that there was fairness. There was a process if the person was terminated on probation So there are a lot of checks and balances, but we also encourage employees who are

feeling You know that their supervisors unfair or they don't understand the process reach out to our compliance staff Because we can intervene we can explain things we can facilitate discussions with

the supervisor You know, we really want to assist employees in that way, you know We operate on behalf of the city but part of that it's ensuring employees are treated fairly Absolutely. Go ahead. Can

I just add to I think one of the things that we we have to maybe do a better job Of is the way we look at probation because it's not a free-for-all, right? You don't just get to say I don't like your

shirt today. You're fired. That's not how it works, right? They still need to Document what they're why they're letting this individual go, right? And so I think to the point that Kristen made about

we want employees to reach out to our team If they feel like something's going on, it's making them uneasy and they feel like maybe their position Like it's a little rocky. Come talk to us before they

get a discharge notice, right? Because if they do that before they get the notice we can really support them as she said I also want to say that just because someone has passed probation also does not

make them safe, right? Correct You still need to perform and so I think this idea that people passing probation early Really cement stem it doesn't because that same documentation that we would use

for persons all probation. We would use if you're not Yeah, and I will tell you as someone who has worked in multiple position I think up until a few years ago I probably spend more time on probation

than off as an employee because of switching positions, right? It really there hasn't been a role that I've had that it takes less than a year for you to really learn the cycle of everything that is

happening sure and so it really gives the employee the opportunity to learn the job because if I give you six months to decide whether I pass or fail and I'm struggling with something probably in five

and a half I'm gonna let you go So let's let's give them more time And so it's really giving them more runway to learn the work so that we can keep them not an opportunity to get rid of them So I just

want to shift the way that I look at probation Yeah, no, I appreciate that that insight and I would love to know if we have data on it I'm curious to know how many folks that have we terminated in

their probationary period? If and and I don't know if that we can have like, you know, it was attendance whatever I don't know if there are you know, there are Factors some degree putting that yeah

that that we can put in And you know, one of the main reasons why I'm asking is because there was a newly formed department and an employee was terminated about a week prior to her To her probationary

period ended we talked about this miss Jackie and She was just floored because she had no idea why she said she had never been written up She had never been reprimanded and this was a salaried, you

know employee and so and and She had cancer and so she was getting her her Surgery like right after her probationary period had ended And we you know and the department terminated her And she was just

floored because she was just like I don't know what I did wrong and there was you know These things that they said but it was just like all of a sudden in a sense So so I'm looking for ways for us to

number one Educate our employees because what that what happened. I pray to God we don't do that again Because if I'm sure if she had the money with the city like the other thing is protecting the

city against suits Because I treated you differently than I treated you. Yeah, you know, I was cool with you And so, you know your your your assessments were whatever like we have to figure out really

concrete ways Where we're where we're assessing people fairly so that again, it gives everyone an equal opportunity To move forward and so the last question I will end with Speaking of that particular

situation Do are because I know departments have like their own HR depending on how big they you know How big they are they have a lot of their own elements and things that say things that they do The

smaller ones may come to you all a little bit more often or it's smaller departments, right? What role do you all have if and if a department is thinking about? reprimanding or terminating someone do

how do they come to you do like What role do you all have to provide that sort of insight or advice to again? Provide and maybe that's the training piece. I'm not sure but I'm trying to understand the

role that you play when we come into Issues on how we reprimand terminate etc employees Hi Nicole Flack labor negotiator again So often, you know, I think many of us will get phone calls from

departments. Yep the way we approach it is we you know hear them out we provide them with Or my my processes. I provide them with options that they may have things they need to think about as they're

making these decisions Ask follow-up questions ask for more information Try to get a whole picture and advise to the to the best of our ability But make sure that they know what their options are as

well and that they're looking for You know any hiccups that might be out there or things They should be looking at to say like oh did we take that under consideration should we be doing more of this?

Did we provide the correct training? Or things like that before they make any type of decision like that and then would you all? Is that advice do so if a department said well here all the things can

you then give the advice and say oh? Yeah, you should terminate that person. I don't want to speak for everybody I would not be making that recommendation mine would be here are the the possibilities

and it is then up to you department head and Individuals to make that to make that decision. Thank you. Thank you so much. I yield my time madam chair, right? Thank you alderwoman Aldermen Spica,

we're gonna kind of get in there concluding That was one one, okay Cuz I weave this way, and then I come back in a circle, okay, thank you for checking so hold please Oh, yeah, cuz I would have come

to you that would been your second right because I did you round, okay I'm okay with that so aldermen Bergales. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much Talking about probationary feedback four

months and eight months for formal feedback. Is that sufficient for employees that are new and learning? Shouldn't they be checking in formally with their supervisor more often? Yeah, that's just a

written formal report, but they are they should be checking in more frequently in most new employees are having daily weekly more frequent interaction, but that's the the probationary report

Formalizing that is the four and eight months Supervisor's supervisor review that for uniformity consistency for additional feedback Ask again, I'm sorry. Does the supervisor supervisor review those

formal feedbacks? So it doesn't go a level up. Oh It should cuz cuz at the end of the day the department head is the only person who has the authority to fire So they need to be kept in the loop on

what's going on with employees Well, if there's room for improvement or if someone's doing exception, absolutely, but that's what I mean They they have to if they think there's an issue or whatever

They need to be communicating with their department heads with their management all the way up. Yes Does the manager plus one ever have a one-on-one with a new employee? That's an in probationary. So

that's getting a little more granular. We don't I will say Typically, it is an HR person and the manager are in the conversation That's normal, but there may be some exceptions. There might be more

people or whatever depending on the size of the department Sure in my corporate History that would that kind of a meeting would happen once a year just so that there's a touch so that People that are

making the bigger decisions have more On the ground boots on the ground feedback does the probationary report include contact information? for the HR compliance team you mentioned that You know people

are encouraged to reach out if they have concerns or if they're disputes or whatnot but does that form list the form that they're handed that lists the concerns or the Progress or lack of progress is

HR compliance teams contact information on that form We can check on that we can check on that and we can add it a few. Thank you a few things for work day architecture Is the testing environment and

what people are? Previewing right now the final environment that will be going live for the city of Milwaukee Now you asking me technical stuff. I don't think so, but I'm not sure So there so I've so

I received a concern that I forward to you guys and it's unfairly left very last minute That came through earlier this morning about gender identification. Yep, is that Is that testing environment

going to be what we're going to see when with the rollout because that would conflict with conversations We've had in the past two years and with your predecessor. Yep. Hi everyone. I'm Katherine

holiday. I'm HR compliance officer I got that same information today that it was in the in the testing environment Well, just to make sure we're on the same page. I got information today that in the

testing environment Someone can identify as non-binary and the question was is that going to be in workday live? Is that the situation you're talking about that that option was not available. Oh in

the testing environment. It's not available, right? Okay, so Yes, that's the way as far as I know we're expecting that once workdays live the gender identity Options are going to mirror the EEO

categories, which are the federal categories that are set well in federal requirements are basic and minimal and we have different values than what the EEOC is Presenting now. I think she's gonna get

to it. Okay. Yeah Okay. So for the reporting requirements in workday we are we're required to report to the EEOC Specific categories, right? So it's there's gender race and ethnicity. So we need that

information so we can report it So if we get something that's not within those categories We can't report it to the to the EEO and be in compliance with what we're required to do So we have other ways

of making sure that employees are supported in their gender identity and expression outside of that, okay You for other organizations that have to do the exact same reporting process in the public

sector in the private sector They have their employee facing portal that that shows this is what you self-select when you're filling out your your detailed information But on the back end, this is

what we report to the EEOC and oftentimes that would reflect what ever kind of Government ID that you've presented for your i9 or for whatever other purpose to verify you are who you say you are and a

lot of Those passports do have X as a gender marker. So we need to have the availability to be accurate and forthright Even if current EEOC requirements don't allow us to report exactly everything

Perfectly accurately. Yes, I agree and So it is a quickly changing landscape also So I don't want to misspeak or you know be uninformed and say the wrong thing about that. So we are Tracking very

closely what other ways we can support employees so what for example one right now is if there is a legal name Versus a different name that someone is going by they can have that on their email like

their email address their email signature their the You know in their workspace like a nameplate in all different areas like that. That's where we do Recommend to departments to support employees if

they're going by a different name Then what's on that legal documentation? But the way it's been explained to us and I'm certainly not a workday expert But in our meetings with the Accenture people

we've explained this is important We want we want to be as inclusive as we can on this and we were still told this is these are the options you Have so I'm hoping that changes at some point. I'm happy

to join that next meeting to address it because this is important and the city has failed with this category in years past and we Need to do what's right for all of our employees. I mean, I think I

think you and Catherine are actually saying the same thing I agree. I think she's saying this is one place where we follow what we're able to do But there are multiple other opportunities to be able

to support So I think we can we can have a conversation about what that looks like and maybe talk about all the different opportunities that exist And if there's opportunity to do some additional

things as well. I just wanna when I when I saw the Screenshots from the testing environment. I was concerned that what we had discussed was not being put into practice And if it if it takes counsel

action, then it'll take counsel We've had multiple conversations. So very glad to hear that I wanted to switch gears a little bit to chronically vacant positions Can you give us a short list of the

top? I wanted to say top five I or maybe top three, but I don't want to limit or Constrain your creativity or your knowledge base But what are the top give us a short list of the top? chronically

vacant positions that DER has to focus on so that we Can do the business of the city citywide alderman bagelis. I knew you were going to ask me this so I wrote it down It's like you have ESPN or

something One that we focused on and this has been a focus for years and we've made progress and then There are certain areas in the health department where we needed a little extra help Public health

nurse is always an area of focus for us As you're probably aware the state statute requires a Bachelor of Science of Nursing in order to be a public health nurse with the city of Milwaukee whereas,

you know an individual can take a registered nursing license exam With a two-year degree and so we have tuition reimbursement that we just bumped up. Absolutely So that could help but that is one of

our chronically. We are always focused on public health nurse Specifically, I think that during your hearing with the health department you talked about the sexual reproductive health area and so This

committee had approved a 7% premium for working in that area. I'm hoping that's going to be helpful I know the health department's been working really hard on filling those vacancies, but that's one

of them fire protection engineer in DNS That's a very nice job. I think there are only one or two of them in the positions ordinance But that's one that we always struggle to fill and in the water

department It's it's a been Sheena's type series That's very difficult to fill and there are very few people out there that do that type of work anymore So I think the we've chronically try it's

posted all the time. You'll see it posted constantly machine repair worker That's one that we work really hard to find individuals but it's a very niche field and all of the trades are very difficult

to recruit for municipal services electrician the Department of Public Works has made enormous progress with that because they have the apprenticeship program They need to have a certain number or

ratio of electricians for each Apprentices to 20, right? So which is helping the numbers absolutely and it's helping I think more women and people of color get into that trade which I think is

fantastic So that one I know we have vacancies right now in that but for a while we didn't have any vacancies So that was really terrific on the part of DPW and then equipment operator Retaining those

individuals finding the right individuals and that's partly on us in DER to figure out that balance Equipment operator is a struggle in it's no pod dry. Yes, exactly Requires that's hard. It's a very

difficult job. It's our unsung heroes of the city. Yes, and We get people to apply for it, but whether or not they stay is another issue I think DPW has made enormous progress in that but that's

another one that we post Continuously and we send the qualified candidates to DPW on a weekly basis So that I think that was five that is fine, right and good job police officer, police aid police

service officer Those are all FPC you are correct alderman. Yeah, so that's not something that you guys directly correct Is there is there any any way that DER should be supporting FPC and their

recruitment recruiting efforts? We try to support them whenever we can you know We feel we do the selection process for all of their non sworn positions so that they can focus on their sworn and their

positions in the DEC We post their positions for them. We kind of run the job apps, which is the application program So we're we post them we engage with the FPC every time we can for recruitment

events And we are always available to assist with like my staff will do some of their background checks with them We're available to help with their testing when they need it, but we you know I worked

in the FPC so I understand the type of work They do and the challenges that they face and so I work very closely with Molly keather steel who is their staffing Administration manager and so we help

them as much as we possibly can including referring candidates if we can do that But they are obviously a separate system under the FPC and they have separate rules for hiring They have separate rules

for certification all of that to help with some of the chronically vacant positions of the FPC deals with The council instituted a couple different variations of a recruitment bonus or a referral

bonus to help incentivize more applications Is that is that kind of a structure is that something that the DER has considered to help with these chronically vacant positions? And is that something

that we should consider? I don't know that we talked about it I don't know. I think maybe we can have a conversation. We do meet with The health department and their staff the Commissioner To discuss

the you know the different positions that they have Again with many of the departments we have standing meetings where we talk about those so that's something we could discuss Or perhaps if it's

something like that BSN can we incentivize and modify the tuition reimbursement limit for that kind for that position to maybe help people in their education there are lots of Incentives that the

private sector uses. Yeah Successfully, and I want to make sure that we're using everything that's successful out there in the marketplace as well Thank you very much. Madam chair. Oh Thank you so

much. We'll begin concluding here any outstanding Areas that we didn't cover Why just wanna check with you all first all the room and more before I go to the all the room and cocks that She had no

questions. Oh, okay. Yes Yes, if possible come back to you for like maybe one or two more we do want to just okay Just kind of and then I'm gonna check with all the room and Pratt when you're done all

the room and more So did you have any outstanding elder member counts? Okay, so all the room and more. Thank you. Thank you so much Quick question. Are we? precluded from hiring family members There

there is a nepotism policy or nepotism rules, right where You should not be you should not have a family member who is in a direct reporting relationship With a manager so I could not hire my kid to

work in DR and report directly to me There are opportunities for family to come into the city and and even sometimes in the same department But there are rules I'll give an example because it happened

to me At the port my son actually did apply and as a personnel officer I was blocked from the entire process for hiring. He also did not report directly to me, right? so there there are those things

family can be hired but it cannot be a Direct reporting relationship that happens and you are required to report if there is a familial relationship So that people are aware and that we can if there

is an essence where the proximity of reporting is close That's some some kind of barrier and it's really to protect both of course, you know both people So no, that should not be a thing that is

happening without increasing team would be the kind of the first line of defense to know about that on the application when you apply it ask you Do you have relatives that work for the city? And so

they would identify that and if there is a Connection with the position that they're applying for they put some of those safeguards in place Perfect, but it doesn't automatically like kick them out.

No because you have a family member working here. Excellent The other question that I have is if an individual if an individual was terminated I think we talked about this and wanted to appeal because

there's there's a process of a yeah, okay Does the appeal process and again obviously it depends on why the individual got terminated But let's just say it's you know, it's a fair thing where they can

appeal. Okay, let's just say that Does it matter like oh, well if you're in this department you can't appeal or if you are at this level like how to can anybody appeal their Terminated position within

those I think it's three days or something like that. You have three days So you have to have civil service status civil service status. Okay, there you go And we don't we don't discriminate I mean if

you as long as you meet the the guidelines that are laid out We just we bring anybody whether and we don't NDR review whether we think what the decision was valid or not We get the appeal we instruct

the employee on what their rights are what the the timeline is for it We hear them. We see their their whatever exhibits they want to put forward for the hearing meet with the Appellant and the

department and lay out how the hearing is gonna go and then the CSC hears that appeal and they make the final decision So we don't we don't make decisions on whether or not the appeal should be heard

Mm-hmm if they apply and they're within that three-day time frame we move it forward You mentioned the word the term civil service status. Yeah, can you explain what that means? So that's an employee

who has passed probation and Kristen would probably do a better job Past probation in a job and so they are now regularly appointed. That's what we call that once you pass probation In a role you are

regularly appointed. So if a person was in a probationary period they could not appeal, right? Interesting. Okay. So what protections do those individuals have never been regularly appointed for the

city anywhere else? Wait, say that one more time. So if so, for instance, if you've worked for the city, yep, am I going nope? Yeah, if you have worked for the city in another department and you pass

probation in that department But you transfer somewhere else and you're on probation in a new role. You've already established civil service that is so you do have a right Got it. Okay, so but if

you've but if you're new you're in your probationary period and you know You may be with us for six months. We can terminate you for any reason. We don't even have to give a reason, correct? I mean

you the form still requires they give a reason but they do not have a valid re I mean I'm try I'm just trying to understand so that that's goes back to the point that Nicole made about Us talking to

them and letting them know what their options are so we're never going to advise that someone take action that would put the city at risk because as we've talked about multiple times already There's a

liability for the decisions that we make and so we're always going to advise You know things that that don't put us in those those risky gray areas, right? so again This is why it's important that

employees know what their rights are correct that they're familiar with the Department of Employee Relations and know that They can reach out to us if they feel like there's something that is going on

where they feel like maybe maybe they're at risk But I want to know what my rights are sure even employees who are on probation. Yeah, we still support those employees, right? They're not just out

there on their own until they pass DER will still support those employees, but we've got to know what's going on before they get to the point where they're discharged But what if there is I mean, what

if just the manager decides or the supervisor decides that, you know You just can't be here anymore. And I don't know I don't know why but let's just say they made a decision six months in there This

person hasn't been late this person have never been written up I'm just you know, hypothetically saying right and within that probationary period the the the manager decides to terminate that

individual Again, and I think that's where I'm just like, well, where's the paperwork? We're like what recourse because what I'm hearing is That there is none because that employee can't think they

can't Appeal, right? It's just okay. The city just terminated me and I'm just trying to understand First of all only a department head can terminate an employee or discharge an employee and not by

state you got it So you're not going to have a rogue manager just releasing. Okay, that's good to know Okay, so only the department head can terminate only a department head can approve a higher Yeah,

so that is one failsafe that it's not going to be a line supervisor that just says I don't like this person I'm getting rid of them. Okay, they would have to prove their case to the department head

who is accountable That's right for that. Absolutely While they may not have an appeal right before the City Service Commission and I've had employees call me and ask me this They always can go to the

EEOC. They can go to the Equal Rights Division. They still have those Okay, venues which we hope doesn't happen Sure But that's why the department head has this responsibility because they're the one

who's going to have to explain the decision Should someone litigate? Could that individual just simply request an exit interview? Is that something just let's say, you know, yep I don't have the right

to appeal You know would that you know, hey, I would love an exit interview because you know I'm made I feel like I'm a stellar employee and I'm not sure what happened. I would love to know You know

just going out. Is that something that's required or can the department head say no? Good afternoon committee members Derek Riley business manager at employee relations So all separating employees

would receive the exit survey. We'd also Prefer that their supervisor supervisors are also providing it to them but we do send that to all employees that are separating this a Department or from the

city and we send that to their personal email addresses So as long as we have their personal email address on file, they should be getting that exit survey So regardless even if probationary status

not like it you're going to get an email for an exit for an exit interview Thank you all so much I think that you know again, I think at the end of the day I want our employees to not feel that I'm

gonna be Excalated again. So if I say something like there are safeguards in place to protect them I I want you know, just fair treatment of our of our employees and when it's not How do we learn from

it and do better? That's that's the main thing. Absolutely. Thank you. Madam chair Okay, wait, I didn't get my second round in but I only have one Premiums from last year - or walk from 2026 to 2027 I

realized we we took the other file out but our premiums changing for employees this year for next Sorry, it's late for next year beginning with open enrollment Good question. Yes, we prove that back

in I think June or July this year Okay came before the committee remind the percentage Molly. Yeah, six percent increase in medical premium from last year's Premium amount so I would just want to make

sure I put this in perspective When you say six percent, it sounds a lot and so we want to put it in perspective from the EPO or A single person an EPO plan and last year was like around fifty two

dollars and rounding and this year is fifty five dollars That's a three dollar difference That's pre-tax. So after taxed it's less than three dollars two dollars plus. Okay, that's what the increase

in putting thing in perspective So yeah, there is a six percent increase in medical and a four percent increase for a Delta dental There are no increase in care plus the reason I asked that is How how

did that? How did that inform the administration's decision then to offer a two percent wage increase to employees? Because with the cost of living and then the increase in premium alone Like did we

look at three do we look at four? Like how do we land on two? I don't know whoever wants to answer that we've been asked it and we've been asked to look at it And I'm assuming that you all got the

same letter from some city employees. I forwarded it when I got it And so we're struggling with this. It was also a part of our Public hearings and so it's helpful to me to understand with that six

percent change Okay, and then the two percent that's being offered. I'm just wondering how we got there Well, I mean the mayor's aware of rising costs for consumers and residents across the board I

don't I think six percent is higher than overall CPI So a medical inflation is again will touch higher than regular inflation So I mean, I think Molly did a good job of outlining the actual scale of

that six percent But it's a balance between keeping wages competitive Making sure the buying power of our workers isn't diminished but also balancing a budget with a hundred million dollar gap Okay,

any concern that the two percent raise might affect retention or people might leave I don't know you guys have experts. So I'm trying to understand that. I mean, we're always thinking about what

impacts retention and our ability to retain employees But I think we also have to balance a number of different things, right? So it really is a balancing act Where we have to consider a number

different. It can't just be wages And it we also as Molly already talked about self-insured So those are costs that come directly from the city's bottom line, right? I think the benefit that employees

have is that these are pre-tax dollars and so it it's a little less than it actually sounds And and I'm not negating. I know it's a concern for everybody, right? We feel it too. We're not exempt from

this So we're all feeling it but there we balance a lot of different things and so for DER we have to look at from the benefits perspective from the Compensation perspective what we're able to afford

but also balancing that with the resources that the city has so it's a tough Job, and I know that we'd all love to give people more But I'll also say this With the employee engagement survey one of

the things when we get in again, we'll bring these results to you one of the the top Opportunity or top positive that we got was city-wide the number one thing that people agreed on was I feel that I

am fairly compensated and so we'll bring that Before you all but I just want to say I think there may be some loud voices on this but I think for the most part people believe that they are compensated

fairly with the city and that has a lot to do with The work that Andrea knicker Barker's team has done with the market studies and trying to get people You know up to par after not having wages and I

see your faces. I know where you're going I don't want to go there because I know there's a there's a thing out there with with electives I'm talking about where we can impact because we can impact

that so We've done as much as we can for employees to make sure that we are competitive So that we can retain employees, but we do have to balance a lot of different things when making those decisions

Did you all have a meeting on that letter with the groups that had reached out to us? So that also testified every hearing So we met with that group multiple times and we met with them on some of

those concerns We there were a couple of new things in there. And so our door is open to that group We meet with them as much as they ask if they if it if it's reasonable there are some things they

asked us for meetings on that in an example of that would be a Department made a decision not to reinstate somebody we're not going to meet on that because that's a department has discretion, right?

But if they're talking about things that affect employees and they want to have a conversation We've we've been open to that. We've met with the groups multiple times Do you have a response to that

letter? I guess it's just hard for me because we got the letter we got the four hours of testimony where we've gotten many calls and emails and meetings requests and I'm trying to understand, you know

why there was such a gap from what they had Requested what the may like why the mayor didn't offer maybe something a little bit different from what they requested in between It's just a weird

situation and I think council members are left kind of trying to fill in the gaps And that's why I'm asking questions to fill fill in the gaps Like was everybody talked to why did they make those

decisions? Why would we be asked to do something that the administration didn't do? We're all looking at the same resources I mean granted we we now have a little bit of a surplus But I'm just trying

to understand those nuances. So and make sure that it wasn't new to you. So Outstanding comment was all the member Gallus you have one more thing - yeah Yeah, I didn't have a second round, but I'll

just I have to cook well wait I you know what I missed you cuz you had stepped out when we came back. Oh, yeah, that's okay Would you mind if he goes for a second round cuz I yield the judgment of the

chair Let's do Alderman spiker for Gallus. Then we'll begin to conclude here. I'm too really quick one. So conclude one is For your KPI service highlights on page 12 you listed average days to

establish an eligible list for open and competitive Recruitments and the trend line there is is trending very positively We had had a separate discussion about what happens after you generate the list

Then it's kind of in the department's hands and what you can do to kind of prep them To be in a good space to hit the ground running. Could you just briefly review that and then also tell me where you

stand on my request in that meeting to kind of coalesce what's going on departments and provide some sort of report or Summary of kind of how the different departments are doing in terms of when you

get them that list to when they get somebody in the seat Thank you for the question and I do want to point out that the staffing division and that's Incredible group of individuals has worked really

hard on this metric. I I suggested that they get to 60 days As a joke and I think they're gonna get there. So thank you for calling that out Alderman We're all immersed in work day right now. So I

don't like to commit anyone to anything It's like if you ask us to bake a pan of brownies from a box mix right now we probably burst into tears, but following that Following that I do Want to work

with our departments to standardize what happens after they get an open and competitive eligible list After they get a list of individuals who are qualified for a transfer promotional you know, we

have multiple mechanisms that we use to hire and DPW and I looked at this for the first 16 pay periods this year and got some data But I'd like to do that with every single department because it's the

candidate experience, right? They don't know what part is DER is what part is the department's it's the candidate experience and we have to honor that So our communications have to honor that and our

timeframes have to honor that So I think if you give us a little breathing room right after the implementation Additionally workday is going to give us much better position control data, which we

haven't been able to do in the past So that's going to be really a huge benefit. I think to this committee as well. Okay. Yeah No, I'm happy to be flexible on that that don't need the data immediately

or anything like that Just want to make sure that's a request that can be honored at some point And then the second thing is the employee resource groups great thing to have throughout the city What

growth have we seen in them either with some groups that started small getting more robust or in the breath? I think last year I had asked about whether there was any Attraction or interest in the

Middle Eastern North African Mina community and whether there was I mean there's fair Representation in certain departments, but I just don't know if there are any groups organized around. Hello So

it's Katherine holiday. I'm the HR compliance officer We did we've surveyed the groups to see how many members they say they have so I have the current numbers for this year But I don't I think

Jackie's pulling up the so do we have all right? so we have nine well, yes, we have nine ERGs with over 750 members, but we don't have the data about what the The breakdown was last like last year

compared to this year, but we can we certainly have those numbers I just don't have them right in front of me They are growing in the sense that we have new ones the newest one that was established is

the Milwaukee 24/7 operations collective which is a group Basically for people to support each other and come together who work all different shifts within the city Yeah, yeah, and they the person

that started it is I believe in the DEC and she was saying like during the flood they They were like talking to water and oh you work their chips who and you're dealing with these same things So

they're certainly growing in that way and having a lot of activities I know you all are great supporters of those and go to those as well. Yep answer your question Yeah, and if you weren't you don't

have to do it now, but if at a later date you can get me the data on the growth that would be useful to see what what groups are in improving in their membership and Any ideas for how we can help them

more be appreciated. Thank you, madam chair Thank you alder member Gellis And I do see you alderwoman Pratt alderwoman Pratt will be our last comment before we adjourn alder man I asked one of my just

one final question be after alderman Pratt 7 p.m. Tomorrow So What reducing probationary periods from 12 months to 6 months compromise City's City Department's ability to perform their functions Is it

a big deal and then the follow-up question is had there have been we heard that there were a number of Exemptions made for the six months that we need 12 Has anyone looked at that list of exemptions

to ensure that they're still valid and applicable and needed and necessary? They don't exist anymore. So so we've gotten rid of everything Right, everyone's on 12 months. So we had fewer and fewer

people who were on six months because Departments kept requesting to add titles for either a nine month or a 12 month probationary period So we had two pages of exceptions in the city service rules.

We got rid of that by going to 12 months I think 12 months benefits both the department in enabling them to assess the totality of the employees work record Before passing them on probation and I

think anything short of that Given that they can also pass them after nine months if they're satisfied that they've been able to see the entire totality of the work I think asking employees given the

complexity of the technical set tasks that we do now Everything is online. Everything is using computer Everything is a database that in addition to assessing their skill with residents and customer

service I think it's really important that employees are given that that extended opportunity to Demonstrate those skills and not be under the pressure to demonstrate them right away immediately while

learning if you know how to use a Spreadsheet then you know how to use the spreadsheet, right? But so my question was is would there be any detrimental operational? Would anything be detrimental to

the operational efficiency of the departments? I think the departments requested this because they weren't Comfortable that they could they could observe the totality of the job. And so what detriment

what could be detrimental Well, you can see someone how they do leaf collection, but you're not seeing them through a full snow season Those things are radically different And I also want to add

alderman that we get a number of requests to city service to extend Probation and that's a department asking to give somebody more opportunity to prove that they can do the job So I don't know that

there's this idea that because you're on probation We want to get rid of you know They really want to give people an opportunity to prove that they can do the work And so I think the 12 months is

reasonable just because of the nature of the work everything we do with the city is on a cycle and It gives them the opportunity to observe that work for the full of that cycle Rather than trying to

judge them on part of it So I think it's while it may not impact the operations It might change the way that people view probation and I don't know that that would be a good thing for us All right.

Thank you for all of that so my data request would be how many people get pulled in early or pulled off probation early at the nine-month mark and How many get extended and is there any Disparity and

department or position for any of those. Okay. Thank you very much All the room and more for your last question and then we'll go to all the room and Pratt and wrap it up here All the room and more. I

think my final question is just how do we keep departments accountable? and I think what I really what I mean by that is how do we move toward more of a Consistency if you understand what I'm saying,

right? Like one department isn't fairly very different from another department And I just and your role in helping to do that because it's just like yep We get the initial applications filter it out

BAM. Here you go. All right, we're done, right? Like what is really the role that you all play and keeping those departments? accountable because I just and again, these are just the the stories that

we hear all the time and it's and We want to create a system where you know, people are just treated fairly Yeah, I think the the role that the ER plays and that is really arming our HR folks all

around the city with information on best practices Being uniform in the way that we do things. So the forms and the documents and the policies making sure that people are Implementing those

consistently the same way across the city Yeah, the labor and compliance division did some work on a template for work rules, right so we can all be Consistent we haven't rolled that out yet, but

that's something that's that we're looking at that's coming we communicate consistently with again that that quarterly personnel officer meeting where We are talking through things that we've seen

over the last quarter concerns that we that have come up Addressing those giving them information so they understand why we do the things that we do The when we have things that come through the Civil

Service Commission Looking at what can we learn from this and how do we roll this out so that all departments can do better? We've we talked to the departments after we have appeals or different

things that come to the Commission Talking them through some of the things that you might want to look at here's some things that came up that could be problematic If we see this coming up

consistently, right? So giving feedback on things like that so I think really just communicating with Not just the HR folks with the department heads with the managers and really helping them to

understand the importance of what we do why we do it but making sure that they know that that we're all on the same page and We want what's best for the city, but that means making sure that our

employees are armed with the the training Development opportunities and really supporting them and doing the work. This is not a weed them out It's really how do we support them and making sure that

this opportunity works for them because we want to retain people, right? I don't I think there's a tone that we're just getting rid of that's not the case people don't like vacancies, right? And part

of us not liking vacancy no shade to budget But they might not let them fill them again, right because there might be restraints. So they want to hold on to folks There's a number of reasons why they

want to hold on we don't want to train you don't want to have service gaps So I think just continue to support the departments the best that we can through policies through training Continue to

communicate with them. That's what DR is doing. Yeah I hope and last thing is what metrics can we use to be able to see that like, how do we know that? We're doing a good job There's I think there's a

lot of metrics that DR is discussed that we are looking to track Workday is gonna help us with some of that and then we'll have to really discuss how we get at some of these other Things we're looking

at best practices Across HR. Yeah, and I think we've got some more work to do in that area So I think we can we can talk some more about that and lastly the exit survey the exit survey goes to who?

Like the department sends it out. Does it go back to the department head? Does it come back to DR? No, there's a few people in DR who have access to that information. Perfect. So it comes back to the

department. Okay. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. I might have missed an unmuting of all the Roman cogs But in the meantime, I'm gonna go to all the Roman Andre a path. Thank you. I don't share I am

excited to hear that. You are going to in-person training. I think that'll Emphasize that there is assistance available because I think you are being optimistic and thinking that employees believe

there is assistance available I would like to know and I'm asking LRB for I know if you ask for the demo for the off-boarding for people are fired During probation for the numbers. I like to know the

demographics of those people who are fired during probation as well offer a suggestion that standardized personnel files Should be housed in DR as well as the department and they should have timed

entry of offenses or whatever And I think that is one of the ways to create some checks and balances I know all the women cut out women more spoke to exit interviews So I'm going to suggest mandatory

exit interviews because in some departments the department head is your direct manager So I don't know where the checks and balances exist if your direct manager is the department head So I'm

suggesting that for a mandatory exit interviews for that in a report created from those interviews Which will help you to report out about what are people saying once they leave these departments

about the managers and there were the directors in those departments Um, well you think yeah, I think just pause for a second. We want Kathy is typing away all of your requests because No, no because

I've asked us of members and I truly appreciate it articulating it so we can all hear it in real time I missed it broke up a little bit. We said something about timed entries. We couldn't hear what

you said I said that I think across departments. They should be standardized personnel files It should not be left to a depart what a personnel file looks like and that the entry should be timed So

that one you are given a personnel file upon Offboarding or a firing that your personnel file should not be something that's created data by a manager or a direct department head That's what's

happening currently. Got it. I'm saying that that needs to that's something that that needs to stop And my other thing is that there should be an emphasis on performance improvement plans, I don't

think that There's a huge push to get rid of people in the city But I have interacted with many people many of my residents who have for our former city employees who have many complaints about the

process Who don't feel supported and don't know the support is there. So I do hope that in the in-person Training going forward that you emphasize that that is there because it's currently that is not

how it how it's conceived and also When we say that people are separated from the city and it has to be an egregious offense Aggregious must be defined it cannot be up to a department head or manager

what egregious means? I believe they're leaving ourself up to so much litigation when it comes to this by not defining these things and by leaving standardized personnel files up to the Managers and

or department hands discretion. Thank you. Okay, that was her second though all the room and Pratt Kathy here our LRB a couple of those could possibly be footnotes if you'd like Summer information

requests, but we have them all and then I'll just have make sure that Kathy reaches out to you directly If she has questions, I want to make sure we codify all of your requests there all the woman

Thank you so much. Okay, all the women more and then we'll end if all the women cogs has anything just really quick I wanted to ask a clarified question as far as time to entry file Is it and I'm

assuming the older woman is saying oh, you know, we're gonna build a case on you now Or like what does what does that mean? Is it something is it on this date? This was you know that you were written

up or you were talked to and then on this date on this date Is that what time dentry means? I'm not sure what what she's asking. I can tell you when when A person is written up or there's some kind of

documentation They do need to submit that to DER and there's an entry in their file. So that's not something that they can go back in Like change the dates are sure right. So so we get that

information Electronically, yeah, okay. And so if someone is that's for formal and formal Like a written suspension a discharge those kinds of things if somebody got a verbal that might be in a folder

in the store You know that that makes sense But if we are terminating someone isn't it wouldn't it be customary that there would have been documentation along the way Yeah, we get a discharge notice.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Yeah That was a lot to take in we're not when I really go back and forth in that right now at five o'clock But it was a lot of information And it was very astute and important

that I want to make sure we have it in the file Alderwoman cogs anything from you at all on Department of Employee Relations? We cannot hear you. I did see your mute go on and off and I didn't know if

you needed to speak Alderwoman cogs We are not hearing you and I'm sorry about that So if you want to let me see if I got any messages from you here last call for Alderwoman cogs I'm sorry. Otherwise

if you can reach out to DER, okay, they want to end and now but we're going to so any other outstanding questions or comments from Members or all the people that are with us. We got a lot at the end

there a lot of notes anything else Okay, seeing and hearing none That will alderman Bergelles moves holds the call the chair here on item one two six. Oh, oh one hearing no objection So ordered we'll

see you at 9 a.m. We have the mayor's office Department of Administration We have compliance and engagement and community wellness and safety. So another long day and we'll see you all tomorrow around

9 a.m Thank you so much. This meeting's adjourned