NEWS
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
A7
Prairie City to
update employee
personnel policy
By Steven Mitchell
Blue Mountain Eagle
Prairie City is updating its
employee handbook and is looking
to adopt the personnel policy next
month.
In a July 6 work session with
elected officials and city employ-
ees, the main policies discussed
were the city’s paid time off,
on-call policies for the public
works department and the griev-
ance process when it concerns a
council member.
Prairie City Public Works Direc-
tor Chris Camarena asked about the
grievance process regarding com-
plaints concerning a city council
member.
Prairie City Mayor Jim Hamsher
said the process is spelled out in the
Prairie City Council Rules and Pro-
cedures Handbook.
According to the handbook,
the meeting decorum section, a
councilor’s conduct toward city
employees is regulated when it
states that council members are not
to “engage in personal attacks, or
impugn the motives of a speaker,”
the rule book states. “Council
members will not criticize or attack
each other, city staff, or other
persons.”
The public works department
employees are currently on call
every third week for seven days
and receive 12.25 hours in comp
time hours, which they have the
option of cashing out at the end of
the year.
The proposed policy, which mir-
rors John Day’s, pays the employ-
ees for an hour and a half on Sat-
urday and Sunday and would pay
them time and a half should they
get called into work.
The reason for the policy
change, Hamsher said, is that the
city cannot afford to pay out hun-
dreds of hours of comp time at the
end of the year as they have been.
He said it’s more fair to both the
city and the employees to pay them
both the overtime rate for the hour
and a half spent on call over the
weekend and for their time spent on
any emergency calls.
Anna Bass from Solutions CPAs
accounting firm said the comp time
is a significant cost to the city.
Camarena said the city will not
keep employees if they cut their
benefits.
“This city talks about always
looking out to keep our employ-
ees here,” he said. “But you’re not
going to keep them here if you start
cutting their benefits.”
Bass said the financial impact
of losing the comp time benefit is
not comparable to how it affects
the city.
“The comp time benefit is very
expensive, and as the employees
get paid and cost-of-living-adjust-
ment raises go up, and taxes go up,
your comp time costs you a quarter
of a percent,” she said.
Camarena said paying an
employee overtime instead of
comp time would be more costly
to the city in the long run.
Hamsher said it is costing the
city more to pay out large sums of
money in comp time at the end of
year. He said the
the purpose of the
policy is to give
the employees the
time off instead of
paying out large
sums of money.
Chris
Another policy
Camarena discussed was the
paid time off pol-
icy. City Coun-
cilor
Georgia
Patterson pointed
out that the draft
did not include,
as it did in the
previous policy,
Anna
that an employee
Bass
who has been
there 20 years
accrues 16 hours of paid vacation
per month.
She said it needed to be added
to the final draft since it had always
been the policy.
“I feel that is fair,” Patterson
said. “You encourage people to
stay, so give them something to
work towards.”
City Councilor Joe Phippen
said the president of the United
States does not even get that many
paid vacation hours.
Patterson said they were not
talking about the president.
“We’re not talking about the
president of the United States,” she
said. “We are talking about Prairie
City employees.”
Phippen said they are Public
Works employees. Patterson said
he was mistaken, that the policy
applied to all city employees.
Camarena said, as a 20-year
employee, it would not be fair for
the city to strip him of the benefit
and that he worked for the time.
Hamsher suggested the employ-
ees make a list of suggestions and
that he would take them to the city
lawyer for review.
After the session, Camarena
told the Eagle that he, his depart-
ment and the city’s elected offi-
cials agree that the city needs an
updated, consistent personnel pol-
icy that works for both his depart-
ment and the city.
He said a “boilermaker tem-
plate” will not fit for the water and
sewage systems in Prairie City.
For instance, John Day,
Camarena said, is on a well sys-
tem, while Prairie City is on an
infiltration gallery, a horizon-
tal channel system to collect and
intercept groundwater by gravity
flow, upstream from Dixie Creek.
Maintaining and checking the
water system brings a different set
of responsibilities, he said.
He also pointed out the demands
of the COVID-19 requirements
and regulations such as the public
bathrooms needing to be cleaned
and sanitized multiple times a day,
seven days a week.
Overall, Camarena said the city
and the public works department
want the same thing: a personnel
policy that is consistent and in the
best interest of the city.
“We’ve never had a good per-
sonnel policy, and everybody is on
the same page that we need that,”
he said. “The verbiage just needs to
be adapted to fit Prairie City.”
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
John Day City Manager Nick Green presents an update on the proposed wastewater treatment plant to the city
council July 14.
John Day’s wastewater treatment
plant overcoming hurdles
By Rudy Diaz
Blue Mountain Eagle
While the new wastewater treat-
ment plant in John Day has seen much
analysis and data gathering over the
years, new milestones are expected to
be met this fiscal year.
During the John Day City Coun-
cil meeting on July 14, City Manager
Nick Green gave an update on the
project that has seen many hurdles.
The budget for design of the plant
was $396,500, including $196,500
from a Community Development
Block Grant and $200,000 as the city
match.
“We went into this knowing the
final design hinges on a successful
procurement of the package treat-
ment plant because we needed the
shop drawings and the site construc-
tion drawings from plant manufac-
turer in order to know how to solicit
for the construction services at the
site,” Green said.
Phase 1 of the project has been
focusing on the preliminary design
report to get procurement documents
for the membrane bioreactor, which
is the equipment for filtration, and
legal and environmental paperwork.
This phase is 95% complete.
Phase 2 continues with the pre-
liminary design report and focuses
on the gravity sewer line connecting
the existing collection system to the
new treatment plant, solids handling,
operations building and more. This
phase is 63% complete.
Phase 3 of the project focuses on
the final design for engineering. This
was put on hold in March as the city
awaits final approval of the prelimi-
nary engineering report and funding
approval.
The environmental package has
been submitted to the CDBG and the
U.S. Department of Agriculture for
review and approval, which allows
the project to proceed, according to
Green.
“What we were not able to do
was award the package treatment
plant because the USDA, as a lender,
wanted to see additional analysis on
the various alternatives that were
proposed, updated cost profiles and
several things they wanted to see
revised,” Green said.
Green added that Flagline Engi-
neering will be a second set of
eyes on the wastewater treatment
plant project to make sure the city
is procuring the best option for the
residents.
The city defined the scope of
work with Flagline Engineering to
write a technical appendix to the pre-
liminary engineering report. Engi-
Eagle file photo
The current John Day wastewater treatment plant Aug. 15.
neering firm Anderson Perry has
been asked to stop work on the pre-
liminary design report until the tech-
nical appendix is completed.
City Councilor Dave Holland
mentioned that some of the slow-
down in this process was caused by
the USDA. Green said they have a
lot of attention to detail and there
were also procedures and analysis
they wanted to be followed before
they made an award.
“In the long run, it’s not going
to hurt us, other than we’ve lost
some time and we may even find
there’s alternatives in the engineer-
ing that can save us some money,”
Green said. “I’m trying to look at
the bright side. Otherwise we would
have awarded already, and we’d be
in construction.”
Green plans to apply for $1.5
million in additional funding from
Business Oregon’s Water/Wastewa-
ter program. The city agenda states
that half is expected to be grant funds
and the other half is expected to be
loans at approximately 2.2% annual
interest.
“As the USDA is reviewing the
preliminary engineering report and
the environmental paperwork, our
goal is to have their funding, CDBG
funds and Water/Wastewater funds
approved this fiscal year which would
be the balance of the money we need
to complete the project,” Green said.
The one thing engineers are going
to look at, per request of the USDA, is
the scalability of the plant.
Green said looking at the regula-
tion for the plant, it has to be designed
for the city’s 20-year forecast, which
shows the city losing population. This
would mean designing for a smaller
population than the city has today.
“That is illogical,” Green said.
“Even designing for today’s popula-
tion ignores all the work we’ve done
in the last four years to open up new
residential housing, incentivised
housing and new businesses.”
Green added that they are trying
to show the USDA the city has a path
for growth and that the facility needs
to be designed so it can be scaled to
accommodate for the growth.
The city council voted and passed a
motion to approve the Flagline scope
of work and authorize the city man-
ager to award a service agreement to
Flagline subject to final review and
approval by Business Oregon, the
USDA and city attorney.
They also passed a motion to
authorize the mayor and city manager
to apply for $1.5 million in Business
Oregon Water/Wastewater financing
for the treatment plant.
In other city news:
• The city council voted to approve
the professional services agreement
with GHD Engineering Inc. This is
for the Fourth Avenue repair project,
which will begin construction next
spring and be completed by next fall.
• A pre-bid on-site meeting was
held on July 13 for the Phase 1 plans
for Seventh Street parking lot proj-
ect. On July 23 bids are due and the
notice of intent to award will be on
July 24. This project is funded by a
grant from the Oregon Parks and Rec-
reation Department.
The agenda states that the Phase
1 plan requires site grading of a new
0.90-acre site for a parking lot at the
west end of Seventh Street, just south
of the current Parks and Rec office
building.
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