01-14-2026 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Staff Report To: Mayor Fischer and Members of the City Council From: Heidi Heller, City Clerk/HR Manager Date: January 14, 2026 Re: Personnel Policy – Second Update Action To Be Considered: Motion to approve, table, or deny the following: • Approve the Amended Personnel Policy as presented Background: The City of Little Canada Personnel Policy recently received a full review of the whole policy for legal language, best practices and law changes by the city attorney’s office. These changes, along with a few staff recommended changes, were reviewed and approved by the City Council at the December 17 Council meeting. After these changes were incorporated into the document, staff again went through the whole policy and have additional recommended changes. Many of the changes are simply updating person references to be gender neutral, and updating staff titles and current processes. Staff again asked the employment attorney from the City Attorney’s office to review sections relating to discipline and additional changes were made. These additional changes are shown in red (remove) and blue (add). Many of the updates are self-explanatory but some need explanation: • Page 10: Language added by City Attorney. Note: this refers to “at-will” employment, whereas Section 23 – Disciplinary Action, previously referred to disciplinary action shall be for “just cause.” The employment attorney stated they had never seen a city use “just cause” in their policy and suggested that it be changed to at-will. That being said, there are notification requirements for discipline or termination and a grievance process that the employee can choose to do, so the city is not actually operating in a strictly “at-will” way. • Page 17: Added language stating that Public Works and Parks Maintenance employees will be paid at 1 ½ times their normal rate of pay when working on a Saturday or Sunday. This has been the practice for many years but it was not noted in the Personnel Policy. • Page 27: Most exempt employees earn an additional 40 hours of PTO each year to compensate for regularly working outside of normal business hours and over 40 hours per week. When these hours are distributed was changed, and language was added to state how many hours new or exiting employees that qualify would receive their partial year of employment. • Page 29: Employees hired prior to 2014 received separate sick and vacation hours. In 2014, the City changed to PTO and the sick hours were put into a “Deferred Sick Leave” bank with the rule that they could not be used unless the employee was out with an illness or emergency for five or more consecutive days. This restriction is proposed to be removed. There are only four employees remaining that have any Deferred Sick Leave and staff sees no reason to continue this rule.