Urbana City Council members talked strategy in a study session Monday night for keeping and recruiting personnel for some of the city’s top jobs.

Since the beginning of this year, at least three high-to-middle-level city positions have been vacated, including the positions of city attorney, assistant city planner and grants manager. Urbana Police Chief Eddie Adair is scheduled to retire in December as well.

“We wanted to look at all that could be done to attract new personnel and retain existing ones,” Councilman Brandon Bowersox said.

The Monday meeting, a follow-up session on the issue, focused on the length of the political appointment list, the minimum and maximum notice period for job termination and the length of the initial appointment. Personnel Manager Mona Shannon and Chief Administrative Officer Bruce Walden, presented a report that compared Urbana’s form of government with those of comparable municipalities like Champaign, Bloomington-Normal and DeKalb.

The report showed that Urbana has 26 political appointees. Other cities typically had about ten appointees. Political appointees can be terminated at any time without notice or just cause. Although none of the recent departures were due to such termination, Shannon and Walden indicated that the possibility of it makes existing city personnel uneasy and deters desirable candidates from applying for vacant positions.

“The perception of risk can be more important than the actual risk,” Walden said.

Employment by mayoral appointment differs from civil service positions which are hired by the head of a city department. Civil service employment provides more inherent protections because it falls under state laws which require employee agreement and termination notice. The report recommended an amendment to an Urbana ordinance that would reclassify a number of political appointees as civil service workers.

Council members, such as Lynn Barnes and Danielle Chynoweth, were in favor of trimming the appointment list down from 26 to six or seven.

“Only policy-setters such as department heads along with the police and fire chiefs would really need to be appointed,” Chynoweth said.

Urbana Mayor Laurel Prussing expressed reluctance to alter the list so radically without more consideration.

“There is no prior record of the conditions of political appointment deterring people from working for us,” Prussing said.

After discussion, the council agreed to a more cautious approach by dropping only four positions from the list. Those positions include director of public works, operations manager, public facilities manager and fleet manager.

Most other members expressed support but tabled the matter for a future caucus.

As the council wrapped up its discussion on the issue, Walden reminded them that these issues were only the low cost/no cost aspects of employee retention.

“The more expensive solutions, like revising the pay scale and compensation packages, are still to come,” Bowersox said.