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12 February 2014

Staff Advisory Council

Meeting Minutes - February 12, 2014

Attendees:  Rose Maio, Zenobia Hargust, Lynn Grady, Delroy Griffiths, Mary Carr, Dorothy Kunzig, Julie DiPietro, Pattie Kim, Christi Pappert, George Darbes and Susan Smythe.  Paula Dale and Mary Lou Lawless attended the meeting as special guests.

Rose Maio opened the meeting at 10:30 a.m. with a brief reference to the posting of the January meeting minutes.  The meetings are available on the SAC webpage of the College website.

The next All Staff Meeting will be held on Thursday, March 20 from 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.  The agenda will include an update from Sue Welsh and a presentation on the status of the campus master plan from Stu Hain and Jan Semler.

Paula Dale and Mary Lou Lawless, co-conveners of the Transportation and Parking Committee attended the meeting to discuss parking concerns.  A committee member shared several concerns from their circle including but not limited to:  

  • the speed at which the new parking permit distribution was implemented and carried out
  • temporary use of handicapped placards
  • limited staff parking availability in the Benjamin West Parking lot.  

Paula Dale and Mary Lou discussed the new parking permit enforcement process and proposed policy changes. There were several topics covered during this discussion including but not limited to: 

 

  • The established goal of the committee is to obtain an accurate assessment of the parking needs of the community
  • The committee needed to proceed with the process of issuing parking permits as the demand for parking spaces continues to increase
  • Changes to faculty and staff parking permits were implemented for spring 2014,.  Student parking permit policy will be reviewed and possibly modified later in the process.
  • A prior version of the campus master plan included taking away green space to create additional parking places.  Several members of the community were in favor of minimizing the amount of green space removed in the future to create additional parking places.  At this time, the committee is working with the allotted parking places available on campus.
  • Enforcement of the parking policy is a concern of the committee and Public Safety.  Efforts are made to enforce the parking policy but those efforts are not always successful.
  • There are old parking signs on campus that have not yet been removed because they are frozen into the ground.  In some cases, a new sign stands next to the old sign.  The old parking signs will be removed by Facilities staff.
  • Handicapped parking spots are designated based on building codes.  If a person has a handicapped placard, that individual is eligible to park in a handicapped spot.  A committee member mentioned the need for more handicapped parking spots at the 101 S. Chester Road location.  
  • The appeal process is being reviewed and further information will be made available.

 

Rose Maio said she was in touch with representatives from Costco and BJS regarding offering special pricing for Swarthmore community members.  Zenobia Hargust is going to discuss this idea further with HR staff.  

Human Resources

Zenobia Hargust said the SLAP survey for child and dependent care has been sent out.  The results of this survey will be reviewed with the students who compiled this survey. Look for another survey that will be sent out regarding employee events on campus.

Zenobia Hargust gave a brief update on the new summer hiring process that will be implemented for summer jobs on campus.  The goal is to give the option of summer employment opportunities to employees on campus who have 9 month positions and would like the opportunity to work during the summer months.  All summer jobs that need to be filled across campus will need to be posted on the College website.  Zenobia asked that all departments on campus provide a list of summer jobs to be filled to Human Resources.  There will be policy changes implemented that will review the hiring of family members.  A comment was made by a committee member about the need for short term "ad hoc" positions in Facilities that frequently come up on very short notice.  

The next SAC meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 12 at 10:30 a.m. in the Gillespie Room.

Respectfully submitted,
Mary Carr