By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
At the start of 2021, the Great Bend Police Department had four open positions and currently the Police Department has six openings on their staff. Great Bend Human Resources Director Randy Keasling says Great Bend is struggling like many other cities and counties to fill public safety jobs, particularly police.
Keasling presented a revised nepotism policy that would allow family
members to be hired in certain circumstances.
"Police Chief Steve Haulmark made the comment that some families that have been in public service, fire and police, have a long history of that," said Keasling. "It is who they are as a family, it runs through their core. Our policy right now does not allow us to take advantage of that."
The biggest revision struck out the part of the policy that states no person
shall be employed in a position in any department if the person is a member of
the immediate family of another employee within that department.
In the case of
police and fire, the idea would be to keep the family members on separate
shifts and avoid an employee having direct supervision of their family member.
"Our goal with this is to continue to hire the very best staff we can," said Keasling. "Agencies across the country are struggling to fill public safety positions. We want to get out of our own way by looking at this policy to find a better way to rewrite it to make our hiring challenges more friendly."
The Police Department already has a brother of an employee with the department
that has applied for a position. The current policy does not allow the hiring
of the brother even if he did not serve on the same shift or same field.
The Great Bend City Council amended the revised nepotism policy leaving in the
executive clause that states at no time may members of the same family serve in
positions on the Executive Team which include the following positions: City
Administrator, City Attorney, City Clerk, Police Chief, Fire Chief, Director of
Public Lands, Director of Public Works, Community Coordinator/CVB Director,
Director of Human Resources and Network Administrator.
The amendment also requested better wording to clarify family members possibly
working on the same shift. The revised policy says occasional supervision may
occur in order to meet staffing requirements, temporary needs or times of an
emergency.
Keasling will brush up the policy according to the council’s requests and
bring it back before the governing body at the April 5 meeting.