City of Warsaw Human Resources Director Denny Harlan explains the changes to the personnel handbook to the Warsaw Common Council at their meeting Monday. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Amendments to the city of Warsaw’s personnel policy handbook were approved on first reading by the Common Council Monday night, Nov. 18,  in hopes the changes will help energize and retain the city’s employees.

Human Resource Director Denny Harlan presented the council the ordinance, which will have to be approved on second reading at the council’s next meeting.

The current city employee handbook was written in 2017 and updated in 2022. Harlan said he and Mayor Jeff Grose worked pretty much all this year on the changes, with the assistance from council members and department heads.

“There’s a lot of things that we wanted to update, just to give our employees a little bit more love. We have a retention initiative that we’re trying to keep moving forward where our turnover has went from about 11% in 2021 down to about 7% now. So the good thing is that we’re keeping our employees and they’re not leaving us to go to other places, and this is just a little bit more towards that initiative,” Harlan said.

The first amendment he highlighted is in regards to jury duty, which will pay employees for time missed due to performing that civic duty. Harlan said the way it was written before, a city employee would get paid for a week or two of jury duty, but after that there was nothing to protect their wages. Most trials are less than a week long, but in case it goes longer, Harlan said they don’t want the city employees to have to worry.

“The next thing that we changed was, (in the) previous handbook, employees could trade in sick time for personal time, but they were only able to get half of the hours that they traded in. So if they gave 10 hours of sick time, they would get five hours of personal time,” Harlan said. “So, in order to kind of remedy that, we’ve gone to where they will have personal time that they will earn, and they’ll have sick time. We won’t do a transfer on that anymore. It’ll just be – this is your personal time, this is your sick time.”

Bereavement time was increased to five days for immediate family.

“As you guys know, longevity has been high on my list the last couple years. I have preached it and preached it and preached it. Our folks that have been here and have stayed with the city and have given us their commitment, I want to make sure that we’re giving back to them. So our vacation policy has changed to where the longer you’re here, the more vacation time you’re going to get,” he said.

Vacation time maxes out at 25 years with six weeks of vacation.

“Again, our sick leave bank, if you worked for more than 10 years, you could get paid out half of whatever was in your sick bank if you left the city. What we’ve done is we’ve increased the number of hours that people can bank, that way if there is a need … the 600 hours we were allowing them to bank may not be enough to get them through what they need to get through, so we’ve increased the bank hours, and then we tiered the payout for longevity. So if you’ve been here 10 years and you decide to leave, you get half, just like it was before,” Harlan said.

At 15 years, it goes up to about 75%, and then the max is paid out at 25 years.

The on-call policy was updated to include compensation for emergencies that can be taken care of remotely.

“Even though they may not have to come in for it, they’re still taking their time to do work for the city, so we want to make sure that’s compensated,” he said. Their time on the clock starts when they get the call and will end when they are done with the job. “If they decide to come in, do the job and then stop at a birthday party for three hours, they’re not getting paid for that three hours. Once the job is complete, that’s when their time is cut off.”

Three new policies were added, with two of them based on new federal laws – the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections. The third is a temporary telework policy, which allows some city employees to temporarily work from home, and is only on a short-term emergency basis if the employee is given permission to do so.

“We’re not going to have anyone working from home on a permanent basis of any kind,” Harlan said.

Other changes to the handbook included updates for grammar, spelling and outdated terms.

“A lot of big changes. I’ve been excited about this for a while,” he said, because he knows how pro-employee the changes are.

Councilwoman Diane Quance asked if there will be an emphasis on the department heads to make employees aware of the handbook and the changes.

“Our plan is, once this is passed … I’m going to go department by department and have a meeting with every department and go over all the changes in the book. We’ll make sure that everybody has a new printed bound copy of it that they get to take home and keep for themselves,” Harlan said.

Grose said the hope is that once everyone is aware of the changes, they see them as a positive.

Another ordinance that Harlan brought before the council, which they approved on first reading, was an amendment to the 2025 police salary ordinance.

Harlan said the Warsaw Police Department has made the decision to go to two 12-hour shifts instead of three eight-hour shifts and the salary ordinance had to be amended to reflect that.

Quance asked if every officer is going to be required to go to 12-hour shifts. Harlan said the patrol division will all be going to the 12-hour shifts and they are the ones who really pushed for the change. Detectives are a different schedule depending on what cases they’re working on, while school resource officers will continue working on the shifts they’re on.

Councilman Mike Klondaris asked what time the shifts start and end. Harlan said they’ll be going 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. The change is tentatively scheduled to begin Jan. 1.

Council President Jack Wilhite presented one item to the rest of the council at the end of Monday’s meeting.

“This past year, council approved a grant of ARPA funds to CCAC in the amount not to exceed $46,916. Two invoices were submitted and paid to the CCAC in the amount of $23,548 each. Half of the grant should have been $23,458. This amounted to a total overpayment of $180. It was discovered in late October when the clerk-treasurer and I met to reconcile the balance of our total funds. Therefore, I submit for your approval an amendment to suspend our ARPA application policy, which states we’ll pay up to 80% of a project, and increase the grant application by $180. This amounts to 0.004% of the entire grant. This was just the easiest way to handle it, and that would bring the total grant to $47,906,” Wilhite explained.

Seeing the amount was minimal, the council approved Wilhite’s recommendation to increase the gift to CCAC by $180.

In other business, the council:

• Reviewed the Warsaw Redevelopment Commission Annual Spending Plan for 2025. Community Economic and Development Director Jeremy Skinner said the plan is a new state requirement to report the upcoming year’s activity.

“Given the way they’ve set it up, what I’ve done is, basically put everything in all the redevelopment districts’ budgets and put it as being spent. Now, that’s unlikely to happen, but the way they created the law it says that any money that you’re going to spend next year, I have to tell you about it now, so I’m telling you now about the money we’re going to spend next year because I have a crystal ball,” he said.

The 2025 total expenditure has $12,593,067, but Skinner said it’s highly unlikely they’re going to spend that much money.

• Approved on first reading an ordinance updating fees for the sale of burial lots and services rendered at Oakwood Cemetery, as requested by sexton Hal Heagy. The last increase was in 2021. The cemetery’s board of regents approved the increase at their meeting Nov. 7.

• Approved Skinner’s request to transfer $35,000 from redevelopment general improvements other than building and $5,000 from Winona Interurban to redevelopment general professional services. He said the funds are to cover ongoing costs associated with the Warsaw Chemical property acquisition and the Gatke property closing, as well as some expenses for the Marsh property.