City Hall to Remain Closed on Alternate Fridays

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By Cassandra Reinhart, Special to the Independent

Though Dolly Parton said that working 9 to 5 was the way to make a living, Laguna Beach City employees will work 7:30 to 5:30 with every other Friday off.

The Laguna Beach City Council voted to approve the continuation of what is called the 9/80 employee work schedule at Tuesday’s council meeting, but not without some push-back from residents.

The schedule continues what was a pilot program in which Laguna Beach City Hall is closed on alternate Fridays, but remains open an hour longer Monday through Thursday with revised business hours, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Emergency services such as police and fire do not operate on the 9/80 schedule.

A number of residents showed up to protest continuing the schedule, telling council members it is inconvenient for citizens.

“This does not work for most of the residents,” said Judie Mancuso, who was defeated in her first campaign for city council. “Obviously when you decrease the amount of time when services are available to you, it’s going to inconvenience the residents.  It works for the employees; it doesn’t work for the residents.”

The 9/80 schedule began as a six-month trial period and one of the conditions negotiated under a multi-year wage pact for city workers. The city initially adopted the change under a trial basis, in part to reduce employee turnover and increase the quality of prospective job candidates. City Manager John Pietig says currently 30 of 34 cities in Orange County operate under the 9/80 schedule, and that Laguna Beach was at a disadvantage without it.

“We are a changing workforce and are finding that our new employees have different expectations and value time and money differently than the employees that have been around longer,” said Pietig. “It is a problem when we would try to recruit and retain employees when we were one of the few cities that did not have this type of a schedule.”

Mike Morris, a member of the Laguna Beach Taxpayers Association, joined Mancuso in opposing making the scheduling change permanent. Morris says the initial schedule change was temporary, and there is no conclusive data in the city’s staff report that supported continuing the program.

“The idea was to try it for six months,” Morris said.  “If you have data, great, show it to me and we can make informed decisions.  We really are just grasping at straws and going with the gut feeling and that is not the way to make decisions for the city or for the residents.”

Morris provided his own data on the 9/80 work schedule. He told the council the 9/80 trial will reduce the number of days City Hall is open in 2017 by 9.1 percent and will create three additional four-day weekends.

“What that means is there will be four additional days where no business can be conducted.  If you had to do something and you recognized it on Thursday afternoon, you’re out of luck,” Morris said.

Ann Marie McKay, vice president of the LB Municipal Employees Association, spoke in support of keeping the 9/80 program.

“We still work 80 hours in a pay period of two weeks,” McKay said.

“We have heard positive feedback from people that like coming in earlier or are able to come later in order to accommodate their own personal schedules.”

A dissenting voice came from Council member Steve Dicterow. “I have been bothered by this from the beginning,” he said.  “I think the purpose of City Hall is to be open for our residents. I think it is problem when it is closed one day out of 10. I would continue the experiment for one more year, but I am not going to support it if it is open-ended.”

Ultimately the council voted to continue the 9/80 schedule and condensed work week. Dicterow pledged to revisit the issue after a year’s data collection to establish if the schedule change has merit.

Mayor Toni Iseman said, “I hope within the next 12 months we can enhance the internet possibilities so that people who are coming to City Hall right now can do their business online.”

 

 

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5 COMMENTS

  1. Those that don’t like the 9/80 are people that rarely come into the City Hall and because the don’t know the schedule they show up on every other closed Friday and are pissed off. Grow up!!! Do your Do Diligence. Welcome to the 21st Century, things are changing. Keep up!

  2. The fact that 30 out of 34 other cities do it is the best reason not to do it. What can we possibly learn by doing it for a year that we don’t know now? What a farce. Are we going to count how many people don’t come on Friday when it is closed?

    Obviously people will adapt to this new inefficiency, that is what statism is all about, you make the people adapt to government. John Pietig is a do it because that is what we hear about when we go to meetings with other public employees just like us. The fact that Iseman thinks doing more online is somehow a solution is funny. All that means is the staff will be doing less work with public, even though they are getting paid to work with public full time.

  3. “The city initially adopted the change under a trial basis, in part to reduce employee turnover and increase the quality of prospective job candidates.”

    Seriously?, there are people who would kill for a government job…and they’re worried about “turnover” because an employee must work on Friday?
    Ok, and these are probably the same people who wonder why Trump won.

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