Score: +3 (3/6/0)

Santa Clara County Grand Jury • 2010-2011 • Agency Response

Response to: City of Mountain View

City of Mountain View*

Published: September 14, 2011 3 pages

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⚠️ Translation Notice: This content has been automatically translated. The original English text is the official version. Translation may contain errors.

⚠️ Este contenido ha sido traducido automáticamente. El texto original en inglés es la versión oficial. La traducción puede contener errores.

Findings and Recommendations 3 findings

F1 Page 1

In spite of public opinion, there are situations that warrant rehiring pensioners and often it makes good business sense to do so. All managers interviewed follow existing procedures, which allow our hiring of pensioners. The City agrees with this finding. The City of Mountain View agrees there are circumstances in which rehiring a retiree minimizes the impact to City operations and services to the community. The City carefully reviews each request to rehire a retiree to ensure that the circumstances meet the City's operational needs. The City generally only approves rehiring retirees on a limited basis until the vacated position is filled, to complete a time-sensitive project or for a seasonal position in the areas of Recreation or Library. Currently, there are 16 City of Mountain View retirees (2.74 percent of the total employees) employed on an hourly basis, and 11 (1.88 percent of total employees) who retired from other agencies.

Related Recommendations (1)

Page 1

If the County or the City/Town of Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Recycled Paper Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga and Sunnyvale desire to end the practice of hiring pensioners, they should make that official by means of a policy decision. This recommendation requires further analysis. The City of Mountain View plans to continue to carefully review requests to rehire pensioners on a limited basis as described above to fulfill operational needs. Should the City desire to discontinue this practice, staff will seek City Council policy direction no later than November 19, 2011.

F2 Page 2

For over six years, the City of Santa Clara has filled a previously 24/7-type of management job with a part-time employee. Clearly, the job is not a temporary or limited-time, urgent-needs position and six years is more than sufficient time to find a replacement. This finding is related to the City of Santa Clara practices only (no response from Mountain View).

Related Recommendations (1)

Page 2

The City of Santa Clara should consider consolidating with another agency's fire department for fire services and eliminate the part-time fire chief position, or fill the position with a permanent part-time employee. This recommendation is related to the City of Santa Clara practices only (no response from Mountain View).

F3 Page 2

The City/Towns of Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga and Sunnyvale—and the County may be inadvertently creating a demand to rehire pensioners because the public-sector retirement age is relatively young at 50 (police and fire) or 55 (administrative positions). The City agrees partially with this finding. There are several reasons why the City of Mountain View may have a need to rehire pensioners. As mentioned previously, there are circumstances in which the City would be better served to fill the vacant position on a temporary basis with a retiree until a replacement is found. The reasons for an individual to retire, or the need to rehire a retiree, are not necessarily a direct result of the retirement age of the City's retirement plan, which is 50 (Police and Fire) and 55 (non-safety positions). Some employees leave before retirement age and many stay on beyond it.

Related Recommendations (1)

Page 3

The 15 Towns and Cities of Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga and Sunnyvale—and the County should continue to pursue a higher retirement age with its public-sector unions and associations. The recommendation requires further analysis. Retirement benefits are subject to the meet-and-confer process. All of the City's labor contracts expire in June 2012. As the City enters into negotiations, staff plans to engage in discussions with employee groups about the overall design of pension and health benefits to ensure long-term sustainability. Thank you for your consideration of this response. Sincerely, Jac Siegel Jac Siegel Mayor, City of Mountain View City Manager cc: City Attorney City Clerk . . * .

Agency Responses 3

Government agencies' official responses to this report's findings and recommendations. Click on a response to see the structured breakdown.

City of Mountain View

September 14, 2011 • 3 pages • 4 responses • Score: +1 (+1, 3, 0) View Details ▾

PDF

4 responses to findings and recommendations

Response: Agree Score: +1

Response: Requires Analysis

Score: 0

Response: Disagree Partially Score: 0

Response: Requires Analysis

Score: 0

The 15 Towns and Cities of Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga and Sunnyvale-and the County should continue to pursue a higher retirement age with its public-sector unions and associations. The recommendation requires further analysis. Retirement benefits are subject to the meet-and-confer process. All of the City's labor contracts expire in June 2012. As the City enters into negotiations, staff plans to engage in discussions with employee groups about the overall desi...

City of Mountain View

September 14, 2011 • 2 pages • 2 responses • Score: +2 (+2, 0, 0) View Details ▾

PDF

2 responses to findings and recommendations

Response: Agree Score: +1

Dispatch consolidation would result in more cost-effective and efficient emergency response and should be implemented throughout Santa Clara County. The City agrees with this finding. The City of Mountain View agrees that the dispatch consolidation could provide a more cost-effective emergency response in Santa Clara County. The City further believes that there are many ways in which greater consolidation or regionalization could occur. In addition to the City's current efforts to establish/provide joint dispatching with the Cities of Palo Alto and Los Altos (described further below), the City...

Response: Agree Score: +1

Radio equipment has not been standardized and impedes effective County-wide communication and emergency dispatch. The City agrees with this finding. A County-wide and interoperable radio system is in the planning stages and SVRIA is preparing an RFP for release in late 2011. A project of this magnitude requires significant infrastructure investments funded through sources not yet identified. Until a project-funding stream is identified, this project will receive priority funding from homeland security grants.

City of Mountain View

September 14, 2011 • 7 pages • 3 responses • Score: 0 (+0, 3, 0) View Details ▾

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3 responses to findings and recommendations

Response: Disagree Partially Score: 0

It is extremely costly to equip a fire department for only the occasional fire response. The County and 15 towns/cities have not been proactive in challenging fire departments to adopt changes that are more cost-effective and that better serve their communities. Further, unions are more interested in job preservation than in providing the right mix of capabilities at a reasonable cost, using tactics to influence the public and fostering firefighter unwillingness to collaborate with EMS. The City partially disagrees with this finding. The City of Mountain View agrees that appropriate staffing l...

Response: Disagree Partially Score: 0

Based on Santa Clara County's fluctuating demand for emergency services, contractually based minimum staffing requirements are not warranted and hinder fire chiefs in effectively managing firefighter staffing to meet time-of-day, day-of-week and season-ofyear demand. This wastes money and may drive station closure as budgets continue to erode. The City partially disagrees with this finding. It is true that calls for emergency services do fluctuate, but it is difficult to predict where and when an emergency response will occur. Because of this, we constantly review our calls for service and how...

Response: Requires Analysis

Score: 0

All cities that manage their own fire department-Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale-and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) that also have contractual minimum staffing requirements should reopen negotiations with the unions to eliminate this term and any other term that limits a fire chief's ability to "rightsize" staffing given the time of day or time of year. This recommendation requires further analysis. The Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Mountain View and its Firefighters (Local 1965) states that a "minimum staffing level of 21 shall be...

* This report's PDF did not contain easily extractable text and required Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for analysis. There may be minor errors in the extracted findings and recommendations due to OCR limitations with scanned documents.