Draft Minutes
Audio bridge # 800-519-1987, pin *1622936*
1. Call to Order and Roll Call
http://gov.alaska.edu/home/who/staff/
Lisa Sporleder, Chair
Barb Rusher, Statewide
Administrative Assembly
Jeri Cary, UAS Staff Council
Vince Yelmene, Statewide
Administrative Assembly
Bob Kizer, UAA APT Council
Jeff Stepp, UAF Staff Council
Others Present:
Jodi Bailey,
Administrative Coordinator, System Governance
Pat Ivey,
Executive Director, System Governance
Kate Ripley,
Director of Public Affairs
Debra Carter,
Employee Communications Specialist
2. Adopt
Agenda
http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/agendas/2006/07-11.html
http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/agendas/2006/07-11.pdf
MOTION: Moved
by Barb Rusher, seconded by Jeff Stepp,
passed without objection.
“The
Staff Alliance moves to adopt the agenda for the
3. Approve
May 9 and June 13, 2006 minutes
http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/minutes/2006/05-19.html
http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/minutes/2006/05-19.pdf
http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/minutes/2006/06-13.html
http://gov.alaska.edu/Staff/minutes/2006/06-13.pdf
MOTION: Moved by Jeff Stepp, seconded by Bob Kizer,
passed without objection.
“The Staff
Alliance moves to adopt the minutes from the
4. Chair’s report
I’d
like to welcome new and returning members to the first FY07 Staff Alliance
meeting. To new members who may not know
why I am here chairing this meeting, elections aren’t held until next month’s
President’s Retreat, and so I agreed to chair two more meetings.
I
wasn’t at the last Board of Regents meeting in June, but there weren’t any
major staff issues upon which I needed to testify, so I chose not to incur the
expense, both in time and money, to attend the Kodiak meeting (though I really
would have loved to see the island!). In
the issue most near and dear to our wallets, the regents, predictably, did not
stand in the way of our Cost of Living raise.
It used to be that the Board had to act in order to affect a
cost-of-living grid shift. In FY05, we
once again asked, and this time the Board agreed, to give us an automatic,
indexed cost-of-living raise annually.
Now the Board has to act to prevent the raise for non-represented
staff. Governance may not be any faster
than any other form of government, but we do have our moments that make it all
worthwhile.
As
we move into the new term year, there are several items of business that are in
process: the Governance Regulation,
Faculty/Staff Development Director recruitment, the development of the ORP Tier
3 retirement option (which took effect July 1, but still may have a retiree
health benefit added), and retiree tuition waivers (I’d like to call it that
instead of senior tuition waivers for retirees so it doesn’t get confused with
the senior citizen tuition waiver program, and Tier 1 retirees aren’t
necessarily senior citizens). We will
continue to keep track of budget and legislative issues through the year,
listen to what is going on in each other’s local governance groups, find out
about new and continuing projects in Human Resources and other areas that
affect staff, and keep our ears open for issues that need our help or
participation. We have something new to
hear about today from Kate Ripley, a new project she would like to start and
wants our input.
If
there are issues that you want to pursue this year, bring them up during the
“other items of interest” part of the agenda.
Next month is our annual President’s Retreat. Everyone gets to come to
Now,
so that returning members have a chance to hear from the new members, I invite
Barb Rusher and Vince Yelmene, the new president and vice president of SAA, to
introduce and say a bit about them.
5. Public Comments
Pat Ivey informed the group that labor pool funds
have been provided by President Hamilton with Vice President Johnsen’s support
to pay for time the Staff Alliance chair spends working for the Staff
Alliance. This would involve separating
out Staff Alliance time on the chair’s time sheet and submitting it to Pat to
initial prior to payment. The total number of hours allowed will be calculated
based on the chair’s salary and benefits.
6. Staff
Governance Reports
SW
No report was given since they haven’t met since
the last meeting.
UAS
http://www.uas.alaska.edu/staffcouncil/
No
report was given since they haven’t met since the last meeting.
UAA
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/governance/classified/
http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/governance/apt/
Bob
Kizer reported that he has been asked for input on the UAA Staff Development Day.
UAF
http://www.uaf.edu/uafgov/staff/index.html
Jeff
Stepp reported that until a person is elected to the President-elect position,
the UAF Staff Council Administrative Committee will divide up the duties of the
position. He asked if UAS or UAA had an
employee handbook and the response was no.
Faculty handbooks do exist at each MAU.
Sporleder did receive an employee handbook when she arrived in 1990 but
was told it was severely out of date at that time.
7. Legislative and Budget Update; FY08
Budget Guidelines
Pat Ivey stated that the FY08 Budget Guidelines
are on the web and will send the link to everyone later today.
8. Employee
Relations
8.1 Beth
Behner, Associate VP, Human Resources
Beth Behner was unable to attend the meeting
because of the pressing need to finalize the new optional retirement plan
details since the plan went into effect July 1.
8.2 HR
On-line Recruitment
http://www.alaska.edu/hr/hractivities/acas/PDF/uakjobsbrochure.pdf
Members continued to express concern about
consistent systemwide training. Jeff
Stepp mentioned his department contacted the local UAF human resources
department and were able to get someone to come to the department to do the
training. He suggested others might want
to do the same.
ACTION: This item was placed on the agenda for the next
meeting.
8.3 Senior
Tuition Waivers for Retirees
http://gov.alaska.edu/staff/projects/2006-05-23-tuitionwaiver-retirees.pdf
Lisa Sporleder prefers this issue be known as the
retiree tuition waiver issue to separate it from the senior citizen tuition
waiver. UA retirees who are not Social Security age-eligible for regular
retirement and were not sixty years old prior to the new UA senior citizen
tuition waiver requirements, are not eligible for UA tuition waivers. The Staff Alliance will continue to press the
issue.
ACTION: This item
was placed on the agenda for the next meeting.
8.4 Update
on Faculty/Staff Development Director Recruitment
There was little discussion on this item, except
that the chosen finalist to whom the job was offered has not responded.
8.5 Retirement
Committee Update
Lisa Sporleder requested that she continue to be
the Staff Alliance liaison on the Retirement Committee.
She informed the group that the committee is discussing
whether or not employees should receive a pension plan with the new ORP and
they are creating scenarios to determine which employees will receive it. The retirement committee did decide that all
rehires after July 1, 2006 will receive a pension plan if they went back into
PERS but were in a TRS or vise versa.
Current employees cannot take part in the new ORP plan without a
significant break in service.
8.6 Other employee relations items
Since Beth Behner could not attend the meeting,
Sporleder asked Debra Carter to update her on Staff Alliance discussions and
concerns relating to human resources issues.
9. KUAC
Thank You Campaign
Kate
Ripley discussed the idea of creating an employee appreciation campaign for staff,
faculty and student employees and for the duration to be a full academic year. She wants it to focus on thanking employees
and not having it be promoting enrollment or part of regular UA ad or giving
campaigns. She stated that a committee
would be created to work on themes and messages and asked for volunteers to
serve on the committee. Barb Rusher, Jeri Cary, and Jeff Stepp and volunteered
to be on the committee. Bob Kizer said
either he or Kim Stanford would serve to represent UAA. Ripley also wants rural representation and
mentioned someone she had in mind.
MOTION: Moved
by Barb Rusher, and seconded by Jeri Cary,
passed without objection.
“The
Staff Alliance supports the KUAC Thank You Campaign for UA employees. This action is effective July 11, 2006.”
10. Update on Governance Regulation
http://gov.alaska.edu/staff/projects/2006-01-20.governancereg.pdf
There has been no new information, approval or
disapproval received since the last Staff Alliance meeting.
11. Agenda
items for next meeting and
President’s
Retreat, August 9-10, 2006, Fairbanks
The Staff Alliance members indicated that at the
retreat, they would like to have presentations on the International Polar Year,
the FY08 budget, advocacy and human resources issues. Agenda items for the
regular meeting on August 10 will include retiree tuition waivers and on-line
recruitment.
12. Other items of interest
There
were no other items of interest.
13. Comments
There were no
additional comments.
14. Adjourn
The
meeting was adjourned at 11:34 AM.