The Fort Smith Board of Directors added two people to the Civil Service Commission on Tuesday, filling the two new spots the directors had decided to add in September in a 4-3 vote.
The board selected Robyn Dawson and John Walker from a pool of 21 applicants after an executive (non-public) session Tuesday night. Dawson is the principal at Spradling Elementary, and Walker is the director of cash posting/credits at Shared Service Center in Fort Smith.
"I had a strong desire, as well as some of the other board members, to get someone with an HR background," Ward 3 Director Mike Lorenz said. Lorenz had supported adding the two spots.
Walker has several years of human resource experience, and Dawson's experience as a principal shows that she has the ability to lead a diverse group of people, Lorenz said.
Likewise, At-large Director Don Hutchings, who had voted against adding the two new spots, said human resource experience was a factor in his decision. He called Dawson's position as a principal "HR at its finest."
Ward 4 Director George Catsavis said he was only looking at the person when considering applicants and didn't consider HR experience.
Commissioners have a hand in hiring police officers and firefighters — an interview with the Civil Service Commission is one of the last steps before being hired. The city's Human Resources Department is looking to further standardize the hiring process because the commission does not have a list of questions that they ask each applicant, the Times Record previously reported. Applicants have sometimes been interviewed by different commissioners, which means they may have been asked different questions or judged by different criteria.
A standardized hiring process levels the playing field for applicants and allows the person interviewing them to compare apples to apples, Walker said.
"We've used a standardized process in education for years," Dawson said, adding that standardization ensures that job applicants have an equal opportunity to do well in the interview.
A standard hiring process also helps a hiring panel be on the same page as to what they are looking for in candidates, she said. Dawson said that she is accustomed to working with policies and regulations, which will help her as a commissioner.
Having Walker and Dawson on the commission will add to its diversity of backgrounds and allow for different input, Lorenz said.
Increasing the size of the Civil Service Commission from five to seven spots was the most recent installment in a series of contentious board decisions surrounding the Civil Service Commission. Hutchings called adding the spots "stacking the court" after the commission did not do what the board wanted, while Lorenz said that most of the city's boards and commissions have more than five members and that the board was complicating a simple issue.
• On May 22, the commission did not approve a request from Police Chief Nathaniel Clark to accept external applicants for supervisor positions instead of only allowing higher positions to be filled through promotion.
• On May 23, Ward 2 Director Andre Good proposed via email to City Administrator Carl Geffken that the Civil Service Commission be dissolved. Fort Smith attorney Joey McCutchen later filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that emails from Good and Lorenz violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by conducting public meeting business via email.
• On June 6, the board passed a nonbinding resolution 4-3 in support of allowing external applicants in an effort to persuade the Civil Service Commission to reconsider.
• On June 27, Ward 1 Director Keith Lau made a motion during a study session to add a resolution to the board’s July 11 meeting agenda removing Chip Sexton, McCutchen’s law partner, from the Civil Service Commission.
• On July 11, the board voted 4-3 to ask Sexton not to participate in commission activities while his law firm is in a lawsuit against the city after a more than two-hour executive session.
• On Sept. 6, the board decided 4-3 to increase the size of the commission from five to seven spots.