Meeting Minutes: September 14th, 2016

NYC School Support Services

Board Meeting

September 14, 2016

4:30 pm, 255 Greenwich St, Room 6M-4

 

Meeting Minutes

 

The meeting of the NYC School Support Services, Inc. (“NYCSSS”) Board was called to order at 4:40 pm by Chairperson Elizabeth Rose, who noted that a quorum was present to conduct business.

 

In attendance were treasurer Larian Angelo, secretary Natalie Green Giles, and Board members David Kramer and Jose Davila, in addition to NYCSSS Executive Director Stephen Brennan, CEO of School Facilities for the DOE John Shea, Erin Lester, Special Assistant from the Office of Deputy Chancellor Rose, Robert Balducci, Deputy Comptroller for the New York City Municipal Water Authority, and Russell Buckley, Supervising Analyst for the Office of Management and Budget.

 

Chairperson Rose reviewed the agenda for the meeting, which included an overview of NYCSSS operations and budget, the resolution to approve a change to the contract with ADP to add the provision of personnel services, and the consideration of any new business.

  1. The approval of the minutes from the July 6, 2016 meeting was tabled for the next meeting of NYCSSS in December.
  2. Executive Director Stephen Brennan led a presentation to the Board of the operations and budget, the first such overview since the official rollout of NYCSSS in August. Chairperson Rose added that a benefit of the new centralized payroll system is the conversion of many employees to direct deposit for paychecks, a potentially large cost savings.  As of September 2016, 1,199 staff members had signed up for direct deposit.  Angelo pointed out that the conversion to direct deposit not only offers a large potential savings to the City, but cuts out check cashing and other potential predatory fees for workers.

    Mr. Brennan mentioned the operational advantages of the new system, which include the ability to manage and track employee time in real time, and being able to pinpoint exactly who is working in which school building during which hours.  This is valuable data for budgeting and auditing, and the data from ADP can be “dumped” directly into the city’s Galaxy data base for more robust and timely analysis, particularly if there is a variance in actual vs. projected spending.

    Board members questioned Mr. Brennan on the timekeeping methods in school buildings, and he responded that custodial staff were still using paper punch cards, requiring custodians to manually enter the time into the ADP payroll system.  An upcoming goal is to convert to digital timekeeping via biometric clocks, and Mr. Brennan is building a proposal for that with ADP.

In addition, Mr. Brennan was questioned about the audit processes to ensure manually entered hours are accurate.  He replied that the process is consistent with the way it has always been done—paper cards are copied and sent to the Division of School Facilities for review, but that this review process can now be checked against Galaxy.

Mr. Brennan was asked to give an update on the search for a three-year lease for office space for NYCSSS and cited two potential sites that are now being explored.

Mr. Brennan then listed his most immediate concerns:

  • Processing of I-9 forms
  • On-boarding the TEMCO workforce (the custodial workers who had been working through City contracts with private companies)
  • Training administrative staff to understand the ADP system
  • Workers compensation procedures
  • Employment verification
  • Unemployment issues

 

A special helpline was set up as employeehelp@nycsss.com to assist employees with transition.  ABM Janitorial Services was contracted to provide a help desk to triage calls so that only the more complex calls went to the ADP staff.  The Board discussed long term plans for providing employee support, and requested an analysis of options (i.e., contracting out or creating in-house capability).

Regarding staffing, Mr. Brennan reported that the first new hire, Gregory Bracco, would be starting on September 19 as the senior operations staff person.  Mr. Brennan said the search is still ongoing for a CFO, with personnel from OMB current being “loaned” to NYCSSS in exchange for a management fee.  Chairperson Rose asked Mr. Brennan to lay out his hiring priorities.  He responded that he would be seeking to fill the positions of CFO, IT, HR director, and administrative staff in the coming weeks.

A brief review of the budget showed new projections, including lower fiscal year 2016 expenses. Come July, 2017 projections will be revised based on the outcome of the year.

 

The contract with the data cleaning operation, SymphonyHR, was extended through December, and is considered to be highly valuable in getting accurate information into the ADP system.

The Board praised Mr. Brennan and the staff of the Division of School Facilities for their success with the NYCSSS rollout.

3. A motion was made and seconded to review the change request to the contract for payroll services between ADP, LLC and NYCSSS to temporarily supplement a NYCSSS retain team to assist with Time Management, HR Management, and PR Management. The motion to review was approved and the resolutions were adopted.

4. Board member David Kramer asked whether a school tour could be arranged to allow the Board to better understand the new custodial management system and “see it in action.” All agreed that this would be desirable and Mr. Shea and Ms. Rose agreed to arrange this.

5. Adjournment

There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 5:40 pm.  The next meeting of the Board will take place in December 2016.  The exact date, time, and location is to be determined.

 

Submitted by Natalie Green Giles, Secretary