Potential changes to the City of Washington Personnel Manual were discussed at the City Council meeting this week during a work session. Among the changes discussed were residency, overtime and compensatory time, vacations, and parental leave. 

City Administrator Joe Gaa gave more information on why these changes are being discussed. “This was something that we didn’t plan to do, this was a year that we needed to renegotiate the union agreement for the maintenance and construction employees. And we talked about a lot of the things they refer to in the personnel manual. So we need to make some updates to the personnel manual. We’re bringing you the bigger changes right now, we will keep talking about some other ones, but some of these we really needed your thoughts on before we started going much further. And all of this, it might be a good time to say, is about recruitment and retention of employees. Folks that we are hiring that are in their 20s think differently than those of us that might be not in our 20s anymore. And younger folks value time off.“  

Part of the proposed changes would be to add a section in the manual called personal days, and that would entitle all full time employees to three personal days a year. The other changes proposed include residency for employees stating, all full-time employees of the City shall reside within 35 miles of Washington City Hall. The City reserves the right to require personnel within certain positions to live within City limits based on their job responsibilities. 

Another topic was parental leave. Currently the City allows for unpaid pregnancy leave as a temporary disability. The proposed change would add paid parental leave to employees who have completed at least one year of service to the City. For the birth or adoption of a child within 6 months of the birth or adoption, up to four weeks paid leave for a parent who gives birth and up to one week paid for a parent who does not give birth.

Discussions will continue on these potential changes, and the council will vote on these topics in a future meeting.