Thank you.

Good evening, everybody.

I call this meeting to order.

This is the council's committee on confirmation of appointment and personnel matters.

It's Monday, April 4th at 6 30 p.m.

Pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2025.

This meeting of the City Council Committee will be conducted via remote participation.

We will post an audio recording, audio video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of this proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting on the City of Somave website and local cable access government channels.

And we'll be at Sister in uh tonight with by Clerk Delaney.

Thank you, Clark.

Clerk, would you please call the role?

Absolutely.

This is Councillor McClellan.

Counselor Hart.

Counselor Link.

Here.

Counselor Ewan Campin.

Here.

Karen Baugh.

Present.

All right.

With that, we do have three presents.

We have Quorum.

Thank you, Clark Delaney.

We will lay item number one on the table to take it at the end for approval.

And so, and the very next item we would do will be to take item five out of order because we have a two VIPs here from HR with the need to go right.

So, Clerk, would you read read item number five, the resolution, please?

Yep, item number five, ID number 26-0239.

That the director of human resources review the hiring for crossing guards, ensuring that the process and requirements are right size and not unnecessarily burdensome, such such that they deter qualified candidates.

Absolutely.

So this is an item that was brought forward by our very own counselor link, you know.

Our let you lead, and then we'll hear from HR, and then we'll determine next step.

Counselor Link.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, through you.

Uh so this came about.

Uh the backstory is that um I I was speaking to uh people over um at the Cervical Community Corporation, and um they were telling me about how uh the the process um seemed like it was really kind of hard just to get the this job.

There they'd been trying to help other people get jobs um with the city uh as crossing guards and and even just that um there was a lot of um it seemed like maybe some a bit the requirements were maybe not properly sized.

I know that the it's um probably difficult to try to make it so like every single um job has different um you know requirements, but uh at the same time uh I I did want to kind of know if we had ways we could um maybe reduce the burden slip, you know, uh especially you know, um in light of the fact that we're we've seen that we don't have uh enough crossing guards if there's a way to maybe um kind of improve that process.

Yeah, through the chair, thank you for the question, uh council link.

Um, and uh I I can assure you that uh in HR here's the difficult part of doing our jobs.

We want to go to people.

Oh, pardon me.

You're my bestie, but you've not been recognized.

You can't sorry.

I appreciate it's okay.

It's okay, you know.

It's like it's just like we gotta it's like a whole, you know, like you know, but again, so you know, put a you know, a thumb pin.

No, don't worry.

I mean, like this is not like you're not you're new to this to this space.

I guess just to put a thumb pin to like counselor link, is just I I think with your input, I'm also interested in just understanding now what specific barriers you know you have identifying the current hiring process and how they may be limiting your ability to recruit and retain crossing guards, you know.

So and and yeah, so now you have the floor, Director Gail.

Okay, thank you.

So through the chair to uh to the to the committee.

Um, as I was beginning to say, is there is a fine line between uh making sure that our hiring processes are having access to everyone and making sure that we're doing our due diligence in hiring people who are uh particularly in sensitive positions, such as working with children, etc.

So there's a uh a whole process that we go through from uh sort of soup to nuts to make sure that we're hiring the right people in the right place.

Um the reason I asked um uh Kristen Hill, our director, our manager of recruitment here tonight is that she is the person responsible for that and has made quite frankly great headway in increasing the number of uh crossing guards that we've hired recently um through some very difficult sort of situations.

Just to remind the uh committee as well that we're working with a demographic uh who are attracted to these positions who are sometimes unfamiliar with the processes that need to happen for uh hiring in any any position at all.

However, we do the best we can.

Krista, I can assure you uh Miss Hill does the best she can to bend over backwards to help people, not only with the application process, but with the onboarding practice as well.