City loses 10 part-timers

The already reduced crew at Placerville City Hall took another hit as a change in Public Employees Retirement law went into effect on Jan.1.

A number of  city employees retired in 2010 and some of them chose to return to part-time duties as retired annuitants. According to PERS law, retired annuitants could work up to 960 hours each fiscal year for a period of time.

"It saved us a huge amount of money because we could pay them hourly for just hours worked and have the advantage of their experience," said Susan Zito, Placerville city clerk-human resources officer.

Going into effect on Jan. 1, was a clarification of the PERS law limiting the number of years that a retired annuitant could work part time at a former job to one year.

"This affects 10 retired annuitants who continue to offer their services part time,"  said City Manager Cleve Morris."There are a few provisions for exceptions to the law, but that might only affect a couple of people."

According to Zito, the city was informed of the  change in law only a couple of weeks ago.

"We've been scrambling to notify all of our retired annuitants," said Morris. "One of the penalties for them of exceeding the one-year limit is the possible risk to their retirement benefits." Some of the retired annuitants have already submitted letters of resignation.

Most affected by the loss of the retired annuitants is the Public Works department, as several longtime former Public Works employees, including retired Public Works Director Randy Pesses had been providing services to the city.

"We may have to contract out some of the engineering services we had been able to do in-house, as in the case of the Western Placerville Interchanges Project, " said Morris, "but we will work through this. "

"It really affects the corps yard," said Zito, "because we had someone to call on  for backup and the ability to call on people with years of experience with the city and now we can't do that anymore."

Morris was already planning a department reorganization in the spring, but said that the situation may push forward that reorganization. "We will make sure that all the necessary functions of the city are covered, " said Morris.

Wendy Schultz

Wendy Schultz has been a columnist for the Mountain Democrat since 2002 and a staff writer since 2005. She covers Placerville city events and City Council meetings, writes feature stories and reports on things of interest in El Dorado County.

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