Council updates personnel policies to align with city manager government, funnels some discipline appeals to grievance process

The Fair Oaks Ranch City Council on March 20 approved changes to the city's personnel policies intended to align procedures with the city manager form of government and to streamline grievance handling.

Jim Williams, assistant city manager, told council the revisions focus on discipline and grievance procedures, remove outdated references to the former city administrator role and strengthen supervisor involvement in informal grievance resolution. The revisions add clearer behavioral standards, clarify which issues are grievable, and funnel certain written warnings and suspensions into the formal grievance process so employees follow a single appeal path rather than multiple parallel processes.

Council directed two staff amendments before finalizing: strike the word “dismissals” from a sentence that routes disciplinary matters to the formal grievance process and change language in the moonlighting section so that holding other employment “that is not properly disclosed and authorized by the city” is covered (council asked staff to change “or” to “and” to ensure administrative review). Williams said the intent is to keep performance evaluations and disciplinary actions administratively separate while ensuring formal discipline can be appealed through the grievance procedure.

The resolution adopting the policy changes passed on a recorded vote. Staff will update the official personnel manual and publish the revised policy; Human Resources will notify employees of the changes.

Outcome: resolution approved; staff to publish updated personnel policy and communicate changes to employees.