Oh, yeah. Okay. No, let's see. Okay. I have the recording started. So, let me just real quickly before I'll give the meeting to Ed. So, Sam and Brett. The employee incentive, oh, and Stuart, did you do this last year? Have you been on for a year? Yeah. Okay. So, Sam and Brett, what it is, is the Attorney General gets an appropriation a certain amount every year for incentive awards. I don't know if this year the, some of that money came to us, but part of your budget is an incentive award. The Attorney General guidelines are 1500 up to 1500 dollars for full time employees. And it's 750. Whatever I put in my email for part time employees, so you have that money. You can allocate either a year or 2 ago, the council asked me to just make recommendations for the staff. So, I have done that you should have all gotten those. And then if you disagree with those, you know, that's fine. The only one I didn't make a recommendation on was mine if you want to give me one. And so that's kind of where we're at. So, Ed, I'll turn it over to you.
Do we want to close the meeting?
Probably. So what I'll do is if someone will make a motion and 2nd and vote on it, we'll close the meeting and I'll keep my camera up. I'll just turn down my sound. So somebody wave at me. When you're ready to come back, and then I'll turn my sound back up and we'll go from there.
I'll make a motion to go in and out of a closed session for purposes of discussing employee merit employee issues.
2nd, anyone 2nd all in favor. Hi, hi.
All right. You're in closed door session. I'm turning off my volume.
Bob, before you turn off your volume. Sorry, Ed. That's all right before we before you turn your volume up, is there anything about any of the employees that we need to know.
Yeah, so last year, I'm sure you probably don't remember Marilyn got a really low award last year only because we had some. Issues that we needed to address and this year I've, I've doubled more. I mean, I'd recommend here for 1000. 1, because I have the budget and 2, she has really done has worked very hard to overcome the deficiencies that were identified last year and her evaluation. That's not to say that things are perfect. You know, everybody makes mistakes. But she really has done has worked really hard to get back to where she was at. Prior to another Marilyn that we all know about. Hi, you know, Tyson and Trent are doing phenomenal jobs. And Ron really has worked hard to get the prosecutor or excuse me, the filing up. This works really hard with general technologies that they've been to hold up. So, I'd recommend a little bit more of an award that I did last year and then Emma’s just done an incredible job for us. In the short time that she's been here, so, yeah, nothing that's it.
1 other question and I, you put the number in there. In the memo, I saw it now I've forgotten it. Yeah. How much money do we have?
$8250 total, and with that said, is you as a council, I mean, you have your own budget. And, you know, we have sufficient budget that if, for some reason, you want to go slightly higher. Then what I have recommended you, you have that option financially. You have that option.
Is the 8250 what you've recommended?
Let's see all of them together, but he has there right now and I put in, I made a motion via email to add a 1500 dollars for Bob as well. The total of all of that with that 1500 dollars for Bob is about 7000 dollars. I believe what I calculated too.
Yeah, so, yes, yeah, there's plenty there will be extra. It's like you said, you can spend it all now. I, I've usually recommended that you do. That we kind of spend it down at the at Christmas. Some folks in the AG’s office will do an end of year more, but I haven't necessarily done that, but if you want to save some money. Or an end of your award, or one of my folks may do something outstanding, like.
Yeah, I think you have that option. Does anybody have any other questions for Bob. OK. turn off my volume.
Does anybody have any ideas or suggestions?
Well, I would be interested in, I mean, using the money now. So, according to my math, and I did take calculus, but I'm bad at math. I think that we're at 7250. And that leaves a 1000 dollars that could be distributed. And that's assuming that we gave Bob 1500, which I think he more than deserves. So I would like to see that remaining 1000 parceled out in incentives because I think everyone has done a good job. So that's just my take.
Stuart, are we, aren't we capped by what the office. Allows I know that's a debate, but. Their practices, and I guess 1 of the questions I had, too, is we have the. I'll say we have the 3 highest paid individuals getting the 3 highest bonuses where the other ones don't get the full amount. Right? So. If I were to give out that extra money, I'd probably move up Ron and Marilyn.
Interesting, I want to give Bob the max amount and then I don't necessarily want to 2nd guess. What he wants to do for the rest of his employees, I think we should just ratify what he wants to do for his employees.
What if we were to double everybody's amount that Bob suggests.
To double it, I don't want to pick if I don't want to pick a fight that isn't necessary with the attorney general's office felt like, since I've been on this committee, we've been doing this dance back and forth about salary and we're part of them, but we're not part of them. And we are them, but we're not them, but we're want to be them, but we're not them. And with the last big increases, it seems like we kind of got on the same page. So, I don't know if it's necessary to try and inflate a bonus just to with the risk of causing more drama.
I'm sort of insane, but Stuart on that, we did do that. I don't know if it was last year or the year before, but we went above what the agency's office had been doing. The money, it sounds like the money we have right now, this 8250 is from the agency's office, not money that is coming out of the actual budget of UPC. And so, if we're going to use their money, I would suggest we sort of adhere to their rules, but that's why I went with the $1,500 for Bob and then everything else that he had already recommended, because it was the sort of money coming from them. And so, I wanted to sort of honor their thing while giving them what Bob had requested as well as one for Bob.
My opinion is the same as it's always been. I think they're very worth it. I'm not terribly concerned with DAG, that is what it is. And they should be, in my opinion, they should be scrambling to match us, not the other way around. I don't want to lose any of our guys. In my opinion, they're as good at what they do as anybody. And my suggestion is reward them for it, but that's just me.
If we don't use that remaining $1,000 now, would that still be available next year? Because there's that $1,000 because Ron and Marilyn could get $1,500, but Bob suggested $1,000 for each of them this year. And so, would that have any impact on what's available next year for them if that $1,000 isn't used this year?
I don't know the answer to that, but if we are going to restrain ourselves with the policy of another agency, I don't know that that would really matter.
So, it seems to me that from what Bob said that this money, $82.50, is available through the end of the fiscal year, which would be June. So, this money is available until June, and then after that, they always claw back whatever we don't use. That's not carryover. I don't think this is probably not carryover. So, obviously, using this amount is a good thing.
He talked about using possibly for end-of-year incentive. What does that look like, generally?
Generally, we've only done one a year in the past while we've had this ability, as far as I know. So, I don't think there's going to be, I mean, if someone did something between now and then, or had some exceptional behavior, I think that's pretty somewhat rewarding for that at that point. It would have some money still in the budget, but that's all.
Yeah, between the end of the calendar year and the end of the fiscal year, right?
Do we want to use all of it now?
So, when looking at the numbers here, you have Trent dressing for $1,500. He has Maryland for $1,000. That's $2,500. $500 for Emma Johnson, that's $3,000. $1,500 for Tyson, that's $4,500. $1,000 for Ron, that's $5,500. And then Bob, whatever we give to Bob, if we gave him $1,500 like Tyson and the other, that would be $7,000 total. There's still $1,250 in there beyond that, in that fund. So, I mean, we could do, if we want to use the $82.50, we could simply parse that out in relation to everybody else's based on a percentage of what it all is. That would be pretty easy to figure out, I think.
Yeah, well, I think that if we did $500 more for Maryland and Ron, Emma from the earlier email could only go up to $7.50. So, that would be exactly $82.50. And that's what it's set up as.
So, the amount allocated by the AG's office would be the full amount. So, the AG's office, their rules say that this is the full amount you can give, but it doesn't mean you have to give all of it. And I think that they don't always give all of it, depending on how people are doing. I don't know what their criteria are. It'd be nice to have someone from the AG's office in here to tell us what they normally do and how they normally do it. But, like they said, we're not the AG's office. This is not, I mean, while they're housed there, they're treated a little bit differently. Everything's done a little bit differently with them.
Okay.
But the money is there. That's where the money comes from. We can give each of them, so we can give each of them the max available, or we can give some of them even more so if we chose. That's up to us, because we're not the AG's office, but we are spending the AG's money.
Got it.
From what Dan Burton has talked to us about in the past, the AG's office in general is quite a bit more stingy, even though they could give the max amount to every employee. They certainly don't come anywhere close to that. Right.
What do you guys want to do?
Yeah, I'm of the general opinion that we shouldn't go over the $1,500. And I also feel like, procedurally, well, maybe not procedurally, but we are over Bob. Bob is over his employees, and to the extent that he feels like we need to ratify his decision to give out incentives to his employees, I'm okay with that. I think, really, our only decision is how much to award to Bob, and I think we should award him the $1,500.
I agree. That's my suggestion, was to Bob to get $1,500. I think Bob has looked into his new part-time employee. She's been on since June. She hasn't worked a full year. That's why he probably didn't go the full amount on her. I'm not sure why on Marilyn, except for what he said here. So, I would renew my motion if you want it. That's to do everything as Bob has asked, and to add the $1,500 for Bob as well. I think it's fair, and it's in line with what he's requested for other people as well.
And then, do we just wait and do something with the remaining $1,250 before the end of the calendar year?
We have that option. At least, we have that option at that point. It's up to us if we want to spend that. Not that I always try and gain goodwill with the AG's office, but if we didn't spend it, it wouldn't hurt us. I think it's good to recognize people when they have exceptional things, and it gives us the opportunity to do that in the future. Even going, if we went all that to one person at some point, I don't know. It's just a matter of what we decide.
Once we're out of closed session, I would second Steven's proposed motion.
Any more discussion in the closed session, I guess, is what we need to ask is, do we need to have more?
I'm good. Do we want to get out of closed session? I'm ready if everyone else is ready. Yes.
All right. Wave to Rob. Wave to Bob. Everybody wave to Bob.
Okay. Hey, guys.
We're out of closed session, Bob. I'll make a motion that we approve the awards as outlined by Robert Church in his email to us, as well as endorse a $1,500 incentive also to Robert Church. Okay.
Second.
Sorry, who seconded that? Rob. Thanks. Okay.
Everyone in favor of the motion? Aye. Opposed? Me. Motion carries.
Oh, let me just read into the record who is in attendance. We've sort of done this at the beginning, so we've got Ed Montgomery, Stuart Williams, Brett Robinson, Randall McKeon, Samantha Smith, Troy Rawlings, Steven Foote, Rob Van Dyke, who has Jeff Grace at proxy, Karen Walker, and Dan Burkus excused. So, thank you.
Move to adjourn.
Second. Done. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. And I will send you my award, the ones that I sent you, if you'll just sign and then send it back to me.
I will.
All right. Thanks, everybody. Have a good Thanksgiving.