Lincoln City Council
Non-union salary increases to be revoted at the Monday night meeting
- Aldermen discuss how the issues arose and how they can be avoided in the future
- Parrott asks for salary comparisons, and Rohlfs asks for a restr7ucturing of the budget building process

 

[May 13, 2023] 

When the Lincoln City Council met on Tuesday, May 9th for the Committee of the Whole workshop meeting there were six members present and two absent. As the evening progressed, it was announced that Rick Hoefle and Tony Zurkammer had resigned from the council. As part of his announcement of those resignations, Mayor Tracy Welch offered a statement on the overall tension and emotionally charged voting session of the week prior. He in summary, said the council had not put its best foot forward during that meeting, and he offered an apology to the citizens of Lincoln, and a personal promise to do better in the future. He asked the council to consider taking an oath of civility and making a vow to treat each other with respect.

On Friday, May 5th, Welch had announced to the council that he was officially vetoing the vote taken the previous week that would have cut the annual wage increases for the non-union administrative/clerical staff working for the city from $4,183 per year to $2,500. In his veto statement he said that he was vetoing the vote and asking the council to come back to the table and re-hash the issue.

At the committee of the whole meeting on Tuesday, Alderman Kevin Bateman asked that the raises be put on the agenda for the voting meeting on Monday, May 15th. He asked that the motion on the agenda be for the original amounts set forth in the first resolution. That would mean a $4,000 increase for the Administrative Assistant to the City Council and the Mayor, and $4,183 for all the other non-union clerical staff.

Lincoln Police Chief Joe Meister presented statistics regarding compensation for other municipalities and asked that the council study the documents he had provided to them and make an informed decision that would lead to reinstating the original raises.

He closed by saying that the ‘civilian’ employees for the city have been instrumental in many grants and renumerations to the city, adding up to “thousands and thousands of dollars.” This was due to the work done by the civilian employees who perform clerical and administrative duties on behalf of the city.

The topic then switched to other items under announcements, but then the council came back to the salaries when Alderman Steve Parrott asked if the council could go into executive session to discuss personnel and salaries. Whether the council should discuss the topic in closed session was then discussed. City Attorney John Hoblit said it was possible, but Bateman said if this was about the raises of the non-union employees that should be done in open session.

Alderman Downs said he felt that unless this was about one specific person, for the sake of transparency he wanted to keep the discussion open.

Eventually it was decided that the majority rule would take precedence. Parrot had made a motion to go into executive session that was seconded by Alderwoman Wanda Lee Rohlfs, and a vote was taken.

The vote resulted in a 3-3 tie with Welch voting no as tiebreaker so the topic was discussed in open session. Those voting in favor of going into executive session were Rohlfs, Parrott, and Alderwoman Robin McClellan. Aldermen Craig Eimer, Bateman and Downs voted not to go into closed session.

Parrott said he would go forward in public and suggested that the council consider hiring GovHR to do a compensation study for all the city employees. Hoblit said that the organization will do a pay scale study like what Chief Meister has already started.

Treasurer Chuck Conzo reminded the council that the city has hired this organization in the past. It was through them that the city found at least one of its city administrators. He said there was a good amount of money involved that would “certainly exceed the amount of raises that are now proposed.” He also noted that the last experience working under GovHR’s did not necessarily end up being good.

Parrott said that if the city employees are indeed severely underpaid, having this study done would help the city act on that, and bring raises up to what is right for the jobs they are performing.

Bateman said that if the city makes the commitment, it could end up that the recommendations are much more than what the current proposed raises are. Parrott said if that was what it took to get it right, he wanted to get it right.

Eimer said if the city gives the original raises, it will be doing what is right for the city and the employees.

Rohlfs again told the council that the biggest problem currently is the way the raises were handled and presented to the council. She is very disturbed by the lack of time the council had to review the budget ahead of time, and ask the questions that are important. She said she couldn’t examine the budget as she would like to in the two weeks she had it from the budget committee. She also noted that she couldn’t single out any employees in the budget and did not actually know the amount of the individual raises until she saw the resolution.

Conzo said that starting earlier was of course possible, but it would compromise the accuracy of the final numbers because projections of revenues cannot be made in December or January and remain intact through the finalization of the budget in April, because factors would change in the interim that impacted those numbers.

He also reminded Rohlfs that there had been two meetings where the budget was to be discussed and no one seemed to have much interest in doing so. He said he recalled specifically Bateman had asked if the council was willing to pass the budget with wages as stated and there still seemed to be no interest in discussing it further.

Parrott supported Rohlfs comments that there was more time needed. He said that it also gave the constituents more time to react and reach out to aldermen with their concerns.

City Clerk Peggy Bateman said when the budget was presented to the council, and after Kevin Bateman specifically asked if the council was going to approve the salaries no one commented, no one asked. She said that the department heads could have answered the questions about their staff, and the city clerk could have answered the questions about her office, but no one asked. She said all this trouble could have been avoided if one person had asked the question.

Welch commented that the council had approved five percent and seven percent raises for department heads, and no one blinked. He said the haggling came down to the non-union staff who have no bargaining power because they have no union representation.

Rohlfs said that there was a lack of understanding on her part as to where these figures came from and who decided. She said she had spoken with Ashley Metelko who is the council Administrative Assistant, and Metelko said she and the other non-union employees had not taken part in discussions about their increases. Welch said they had not.

He explained that the treasurer considers many factors and comes up with a number that is then given to the budget committee for their consideration. Welch said the figure was presented to the budget committee and at the end of the work, all left the meeting knowing what those raises were going to be. Welch said what he regretted was that the budget meetings had not been recorded, and there had been no roll call vote on the various items brought before the budget committee.

Kevin Bateman said that he agreed that there needed to be changes in the budgeting process. Nonetheless, he had taken the new budget and compared it to the last budget and could see that there was a 10 percent increase in overall payrolls, and the council could have questioned then why that 10 percent was being sought.

Bateman said that the council had done wrong by changing the amounts of the raises for the non-union employees in the May 1st resolution, and it now needed to fix the wrong that had been done. Then in the future, fix the process for determining the budget.

Welch interrupted the conversation saying that the original question by Parrott had been about the salary comparison for all employees and not about the specific raises in question. He asked Parrott if that is still what he is seeking. Parrott said he was, but not necessarily for this year, but for the years moving forward.

Welch said there would be a motion to give the non-union employees the original raises and the “vote will fall where it falls.” But then he asked if the council was prepared to face what it might learn from a salary comparison. He asked if the results are that a $40,000 a year salary for an administrative/clerical position is way under the standard, was the city going to be prepared to act on the recommendations of the study.

Chief Meister said that he felt that the city could do the research “in house.” He said what he had put together thus far had been done at no extra cost to the city, and he felt like all the department heads could do the research for their respective staff and the city would not need to pay someone to do it.

Meister also said that the council should be aware that there are bargaining units the current non-union employees could become a part of and thus have union representation and bargaining power.

Rohlfs said she was going to say one last thing. She recalled that last year, the same positions had been given $4,000 raises and told that they should not expect that same amount in the future. However, she noted that for the second year, those same positions are receiving another $4,000 raise. She said that she felt they would expect it again in the future, and perhaps they would expect even more.

Welch said there were two factors playing together. He said first he and the city clerk and treasurer had looked at what the city could afford and if the city was financially stable enough to give the suggested raises. He said the raises came from two directions, first based on performance, and secondly based on a standard for the roll of the position. He said there is no performance standard and evaluation in the city, and that is something that also needs to be changed.

He said that telling the staff not to expect the same treatment in the next year was not a promise that it would not happen, it was telling them that if it didn’t happen there should be no expectation and no argument of “well we got it last year.”

He also said that in the week prior, there had been comments about the staff knowing what the raises were going to be ahead of the vote. Welch said it was not “leaked” as had been speculated, he told the staff himself what the numbers were after the budget committee approved the numbers, and he told the committee he was going to do so. He said in years past, the staff had not known the proposed raises until it had come to the battle in the council chambers.

Conzo also added that during the budget committee meetings, he had said that if there were lines that were being presented to the council in the budget that had not been decided upon unanimously in the budget meetings, that the budget committee members not in agreement had the right to give a minority report to the council when the budget is first presented. He added that at the time the budget was first presented to the council, no member of the committee offered a minority report for any of the lines in the budget.

Welch began drawing the discussion to a close saying, “Hopefully this conversation has shed some light on some things that may have been gray areas for those that were curious of what happened during budget discussions and how things transpired.

“There is a lot that happened with this, and I’m sorry that it came to this. I think that we can do better. As I said before, we need to be very conscience of how we move forward and fix things because I imagine those eight employees have a lot of mixed emotions right now about how people feel about them.

“There have been things said that probably should not have been said and I just think that next week when this comes before the council, I still hope that the council corrects this and then we can move forward to make it better.

“We should all want to do better for the people that elected us. Every one of us. And I know the department heads have that same mission in mind.

“I know there’s been some words that have been shared and actions taken that perhaps have driven some wedges in relationships among us as council members and I’m committed to making that better. I think we need to make it better. We all need to move forward. For good or bad, the decisions that we make [should] show the people that we are actually up here doing the people’s work.

“I don’t regret my action to veto the raises that were given. I think we can do better.”

Rohlfs responded saying that she didn’t want to ignore the opinions of the constituents. She had heard from people who said the raises were too much and that was something that the council should listen to as well.

Soon after, there was a motion to adjourn the meeting.

On the Monday night agenda will be a motion to reconsider the original amount of the raises for the non-union administrative/clerical staff working for the city of Lincoln.

Nila Smith