Civil Service Commission Ordinance Removed 8/7/2023
The Board of Selectmen voted on August 7, 2023, to eliminate Ordinance #12 related to the "Civil Service Board." If you have any questions, please contact the Town Manager at townmanager@townofwinchester.org.
Background
Since 1991, the Town of Winchester has had a Civil Service Commission. The Civil Service Commission follows State Statutes to oversee the Town’s hiring practices. This involves requiring a very specific application to be completed, a series of examinations to be applied to applicants (with a series of questions that are supposed to be created by Civil Service Commission staff to populate the examinations), and rigid requirements around who may be considered for appointment to any given applicant. The Civil Service Commission rules are on file in the Town Manager’s Office and are available for public inspection.
Over the course of many years, Town management has documented inefficiencies in town processes and procedures caused by the Civil Service Commission. See below for specific examples of the inefficiencies. As a result of these issues, the Town Manager has submitted a recommendation to the Board of Selectmen that Ordinance #12, entitled "Civil Service Board," be eliminated from the Town's Code of Ordinances.
Over the course of many years, Town management has documented inefficiencies in town processes and procedures caused by the Civil Service Commission. See below for specific examples of the inefficiencies. As a result of these issues, the Town Manager has submitted a recommendation to the Board of Selectmen that Ordinance #12, entitled "Civil Service Board," be eliminated from the Town's Code of Ordinances.
Town Management's Examples of Documented Inefficiencies
- The Commission’s examinations are overseen by a paid Chief Examiner or the Commission’s other appointees. Additionally, the Commission hires their own Executive Secretary. All this collectively adds significant costs to the operation of the Commission (upwards of $10,000 per year in total).
- The Civil Service Commission requires written and oral examinations of applicants that can take weeks, even months to prepare, set-up, administer, and score. This creates extensive application processes and wait times for applicants, which has led to many of our would-be hires to be scooped up by other employers in the meantime or to be scared off by the multiple examinations and withdraw from our process completely.
- The Civil Service Commission’s rules around nepotism and favoritism are more relaxed than those found in the Town’s new Employee Handbook, leaving the Town more susceptible to such issues so long as the Commission continues to operate. In fact, former (not current) members of the Civil Service Commission have overseen the hiring of at least one immediate family member. Putting control back in the hands of the Town Manager's Office, with the Board of Selectmen overseeing the Town Manager and able to remove them from office if necessary, will prevent this from ever happening again.
- The Commission manages their own paperwork filing and record-keeping, preventing Town employees from ensuring that records are being kept in compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.
- Until 2022, the Civil Service Commission prohibited the Town from collecting applications via email and placing job ads on modern, highly-trafficked websites like Indeed. Still, Commission issues with this method of collecting applications are numerous and have interfered with the Town’s ability to hire top candidates in a timely manner.
- The Civil Service Commission does not forward all applications to the Town Manager’s Office for consideration; only those that, on a relatively subjective basis, meet the Commission’s minimum qualification threshold. This factor greatly reduces the number of applicants that the Town may consider for appointment, in some cases removing applicants from consideration that Town management has found to be qualified in their eyes. This process takes weeks, if not months, to complete.
- The Commission meets just once a month, which has, at times, meant that questions that may otherwise be answered in a few minutes can take up to a month to receive a formal response, greatly delaying hiring practices.
- The Civil Service Commission does not allow for alterations to be made to their application form, despite the fact that the application form requires applicants to enter duplicate information that would otherwise appear on a resume and despite the fact that the form was created in the 1990s and modern personnel management practices have changed dramatically since that time.
- The Commission has created an arbitrary cutoff of 19 hours per week as marking the difference between a part-time employee and a full-time employee; employees working under that threshold are not subjected to Civil Service rules, and it is the position of Town management that rules should be applied consistently to all hires.
- The Commission has created and enforces rules that make shared service agreements with other towns nearly impossible, even in instances where it will allow the Town to hire and retain top talent or see cost savings.
- The Civil Service Commission’s rules are generally founded in State Statute, making them extremely difficult to change.
- The Town Manager appoints members of the Civil Service Commission, which eliminates any effectiveness it may have had as a "check and balance" on the hiring process.
- Overall, Civil Service Commissions are established around the state to manage extremely large bureaucratic hiring processes – these commissions are usually established in large cities like Waterbury and New Haven. Winchester is the smallest town with a Civil Service Commission, and inefficiencies have arisen as a result of its implementation here.
Thank You to our Current Volunteers
I want to make sure that it is clear that any inefficiencies or issues that have arisen around the Civil Service Commission’s operations are not related to the people who sit on that Commission or the people who fill other Commission-appointed roles. On the contrary, the volunteers who are a part of this operation and help with its administration have done admirable work, regularly taking time away from their personal and professional lives to contribute to the Commission’s activities with no monetary compensation. I am grateful for their service. I have met with each of them individually to explain my position on this matter. In those conversations, all acknowledged that they, too, saw the ineffective nature of facets of the Civil Service Commission. It is my hope that each of those individuals will be interested in serving on the Town’s Ethics Commission, where they may continue to support the Town.
Civil Service Commission's Opinion on Current Ordinance Review
The Civil Service Commission has issued a statement regarding the Board of Selectmen's current review of Ordinance #12. Click here to read it.
Safeguarding the Town's Hiring Practices
I also want to make it clear that the removal of the Civil Service Commission will not in any way relax safeguards to the Town’s hiring practices. Rather, the Town’s new Employee Handbook has more strict rules and regulations around nepotism and favoritism than the Civil Service Commission has, and transferring our hiring practices to be governed by the Employee Handbook will help strengthen these rules. The Town Manager will be subject to review both by the Board of Selectmen and the Ethics Commission if any wrongdoing is found, an oversight process that can be more robust and efficient than Civil Service. The Town Charter enshrines the Town’s commitment to hiring based on merit alone (Article XII, “The Merit System”), and Town management will always work to implement the requirements of the Merit System.
Legal Opinion
Legal counsel has provided my office and the Board of Selectmen with an opinion outlining how the Civil Service Commission was first put into place and how the entity may be removed in favor of professional management hiring practices. In order to proceed, the Board of Selectmen would need to remove Chapter 12 from the new Code of Ordinances. Upon the revocation of that ordinance, the Town’s personnel policies, recently reviewed by both the Civil Service Commission and Board of Selectmen and adopted by Town Manager with the blessing of both bodies, would govern the Town’s hiring practices.
Process
This matter was first heard at the regular Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday, July 3, 2023. Per the Town’s Charter, an ordinance must be discussed and reviewed at three separate meetings before it can be amended in any way. July 3rd’s meeting constituted the first of these three meetings, and July 17th meeting constituted the second. The process from here will be as follows:
- Monday, August 7, 2023: further discussion will be held at the regular Board of Selectmen meeting, constituting the third meeting where this will occur. At or after this meeting, the requested alterations can be made by the Board of Selectmen.
A Legal Notice has been placed on the Town's website, in the Town Clerk's Office, and in the local newspaper ensuring that Town residents are aware of this proposed alteration.
Fiscal Implications
A cost savings will be found through the reduction of Civil Service staff being paid to administer testing programs related to the Civil Service Commission rules. We estimate cost savings of at least $10,850. Beyond this, many hours of paid Town and Water & Sewer staff time will be saved.
Questions
If you have any questions about this process, please contact the Town Manager at townmanager@townofwinchester.org or at 860-738-6962.