The Edmonds City Council Public Safety, Planning, Human Services, and Personnel (PSPHSP) Committee met to conduct a first reading of the Senior Office Specialist (City Clerk) job description and decide whether to forward it to the full City Council. Agenda materials list the meeting date as March 17, 2026, but the supplied meeting timestamp is March 26, 2026; this summary uses the supplied timestamp. No public testimony was offered.
17th, my meeting of Edmonds City Council Public Safety Planning, Human Services, and Personnel Committee meeting, also referred to as PSP HSP at 4:30 p.m. in attendance. We have committee member um Susan Pain, and we also have Ex Oficio, our council president Michelle Dosht, Vivian Olson, and our city clerk Luke Lani and Rayanne Duarte from Human Resources. Please feel free to start with presenting item 2.1, the senior office specialist job description for three. And before moving forward with filling that position, HR partnered with finance, the mayor, and uh the city clerk to have an understanding of what the needs are of that role and what is the appropriate position uh for performing uh the tasks that are required of that position. So from that analysis, uh it came that senior office specialist would probably be more of an appropriate role. There's been some change in what title has job title has been there and what the roles have been, but based on what the current needs are, we've utilized the existing senior office specialist job classification and the job description. We've cleared it up, we've cleaned it up to accurately reflect what the city needs. And then we've also determined that the position would be better placed with the city clerk. Uh there are some processes that intersect, and I think the city clerk is in a position to better support this role. And finance was also in support of that move. And it also, we have currently the position is allocated for an administrative assistant. Moving this to a senior office uh specialist does create some high school, Ryan. Um, I'm having a technical issue on my end where my speakers are not functioning. I think this is the issue Susan had with the Zoom during our previous meeting. So, Susan, I'm gonna ask if you can take on sharing responsibilities while I'll sugar this out. Yeah, no, happy to. I um the last time it was a problem because it was I was using Zoom from my iPad using the the browser, not the app. So okay, so um uh Rayan, please go ahead and talk about the senior specialist position. Um sorry for the interruption. No, go on, tell us more. Uh so the salary grade is less and it will result in some salary savings uh when we move to this position. Okay. Uh so essentially you have the attached job description that clearly outlines the emphasis on having uh very customer focused, professional uh person that is at the front that is able to warmly greet visitors that come into city hall, direct them to the appropriate person, and manage the elevator that has access control on it. Um, and also provide support some of the functions in the city clerk's office as well. Okay, good. All right. Um Jenna, come back off of mute when you think that you're that it's going to be working well for you. Or if you think it's um unstable internet, then you can do your camera off and then do the mute. Um and I have I do have a question, and um, it's for Rayanne, then also um for our city clerk, um Lublani. So in reviewing the job description, it looks like driving is um uh having a well, having a license is required. And um I so my question is will this will this um person be driving for the city of Edmonds? And what if we had a solid candidate but did not have a um uh driving record that would support the you know this this person's ability to take out a city car, um, and is the expectation that this person's going to be um driving as a part of their body of work. I'd hate to have um someone with uh with a driving record, um, although a good employee, a good employee candidate, um, not have them have uh you know, have that be a barrier to employment. At the time during discussions, uh, driving was not expressed as like an essential function of the role, but it also wasn't guaranteed that it would be precluded from a task that would be asked of this position. And I think that is the reason for the language in the requirement to say for any position that will drive for city business. So in the event that we do determine this person will have driving responsibilities, we do have that uh language that would allow us to require that the license and the driving abstract. Right. And so if if the if it was left at the old language, driver's license required if driving city owned vehicles. We don't want anybody who has if you don't qualify to drive for drive a city vehicle, but you're still driving for work. We don't really want people driving for work because of other liability issues, right? Yeah, it it definitely extends beyond just city owned vehicles. Anytime it's in the nature of doing work for the city, yeah. It have that they have that liability. So absolutely. Um in the past with the this is a position that that's getting um re-evaluated and down and and down downgraded down the pace scale. Did the the prior um yeah, incumbent did she drive around the city at all? Um I mean, I believe there may have been instances where she would have to drive to other off-site meetings at like different locations in the city, but I don't know if she chose to walk to those, like when we had meetings at Francis Anderson Center. Um so I don't know if she drove or not, but I knew I've seen her at other off-site meetings. Okay, all right.