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 In that time, they reviewed projected expenditures from the city
police department, clerk’s office, building and safety, sewer, and
reviewed the city administrator and city mayor budgets.
Early on in the discussions City Administrator Clay Johnson said he
had discussed the budget with the department heads for the city and
had advised them there would be no room for new hires in the 2015-16
fiscal year. While departments will not be able to add employees,
they would be able to replace employees who leave their respective
departments during the year.
At the end of the night, in reviewing his own budget, Johnson shared
that there was no pay increase considered for himself in the budget.
He has also done away with dollars for a part time office assistant.
He said that in keeping with what he had implemented for the city
departments, it was only right that he too do away with any
potential new hire.
According to Johnson, the previous city administrator Sue McLaughlin
had utilized Kathy Vinyard, who is the assistant to the mayor, but
also had a second part-timer who left when McLaughlin did. That
second position is the one Johnson was referring to when he said he
would not hire a new assistant.
In the mayoral budget, dollars remain for retaining Vinyard as an
assistant to that office.
Throughout the evening, the common thread of all the discussion was
the manner in which the city gives raises to non-union employees.
Revenues for the City of Lincoln come from a wide variety of
sources. Within those revenues, there are dollars that have to be
spent in a particular manner, and there are dollars that are placed
in the city’s General Fund.
The General Fund is money that can be spent at the city’s
discretion. However, it is also the fund from which the majority of
the wages are paid. In looking at the dollars in the general fund as
a pie, the largest slice of that pie goes to wages.
In addition, most of the employees for the city are members of
unions. Those wages are determined through collective bargaining
agreements with wage increases anticipated annually.
For other employees, Johnson said the first draft of the budget
included three-percent increases for full-time employees, and $0.25
raises for part-time employees. However, as the evening progressed,
it was mentioned that not all non-union employees would be given
raises. It also appeared that for at least a few employees, the
department heads wished to give increases far greater than the
three-percent.
This brought on the discussion led by Alderwoman Michelle Bauer
about how the city determines the raises. She said there is no pay
structure in place to provide a guideline on what warrants a raise.
In the city, there is also no evaluation process to demonstrate that
an employee is performing as expected.
The pay structure issue began when Police Chief Ken Greenslate was
questioned about the salary paid to the police department’s
Administrative Assistant.
Greenslate volunteered to present his budget first. Before he began,
Temporary Chairperson Marty Neitzel said she had a question. She
wanted to know who had set the salary for the department’s
administrative assistant. She said the salary of $35,000 per year
had not been approved by the city council. Greenslate said the
council had approved allowing Mayor Keith Snyder to make the
appointment and had also agreed to pay the position according to
experience and ability. He said that the pay rate had been
determined according to the wages being earned in other positions by
the most highly qualified applicants.
Greenslate indicated that because this was a new position, filled in
February of this year, he was holding the salary level for the
coming year, not asking for any increase. He also noted that the new
hire came to the city at a salary that was $10,000 less than the
former secretary, Brenda McCabe.
However, it was driven home by Gehlbach that the decision to pay the
assistant that amount of money was done out of order because the
council did not approve the dollar amount. In reviewing what was
passed, Scott Cooper read the addition to the city code that
accompanied the creation of the new position. “The administrative
assistant to the chief of police shall receive compensation in such
amount and manner as the Council shall fix from time to time.”
Alderwoman Jonie Tibbs suggested that the salary be reset at $30,000
per year. However, Bauer objected saying that once the amount was
established, it would not be right to take dollars away. But, she
also said that if the city had a pay structure in place, this type
of situation would not have arisen at all.
The pay rate dilemma
appeared to come to a head as the Council heard from City Clerk
Susan Gehlbach concerning a pay increase for Sewer Clerk, Dawn
Crowell.
Gehlbach went second after Greenslate in presenting her budget. She
began by explaining that as the appointed deputy clerk, Joy Fulk is
being paid from the city clerk’s budget and also by the sewer
department budget. She was asking for a three-percent increase for
Fulk.
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Fulk pointed out she was originally hired as a part-time payroll
clerk. When appointed as deputy clerk, she continued with her
payroll duties and the part-time position was never filled. She said
that by doing this, the city had saved approximately $14,000 per
year in part-time wages.
Gehlbach also asked for a significant raise for Dawn Crowell, the
current sewer billing clerk. Crowell currently makes $23,234 per
year. Gehlbach said she had asked for a $5,000 increase, but in the
budget proposal the increase was from 23,234 to 25,750 or
approximately 10 percent.
Gehlbach said that Crowell had been invaluable to her department in
advancing the way the sewer billing is done. She said it was Crowell
who figured out how to use the current billing software to create
full-page paper statements for the sewer department, something the
city had been told could not be done with the current software. She
said Crowell had also discovered sewer addresses that had never been
billed and corrected that.
City Treasurer Chuck Conzo added that Crowell had been a great asset
in helping to figure out how to submit certain reports online to the
State of Illinois from his office. Again, this was something that
was not supposed to be possible with the software the city currently
uses.
Gehlbach said that Crowell goes well beyond what is expected of her
and likened her to being nearly irreplaceable.
Todd Mourning pointed a question directly to Gehlbach. “I agree with
you that she is valuable, she has saved the city money, she has
pushed us forward and she needs some type of compensation. Going
back to our lack of structure that is obvious; are you saying she is
more valuable than Joy? I know that may be uncomfortable I don’t
expect you to answer, but just by saying she needs another $5,000,
there is no structure, you don’t know if that is comparable. Joy is
very valuable too. You can’t just say, ‘I think she’s more
valuable.’”
Johnson offered to explain. He said he had put the $2,516 increase
in for Crowell, which was an increase of about10 percent. “We have
to think about what the rest of the employees look at when they see
an employee get a 10 percent raise, and they only get a 3 percent or
$0.25 on an hourly rate. There is no structure. So, I tried to
provide a little bit of structure. $25,750 matches the other lowest
paid salaried employee that is in John’s (Building and Safety)
office.”
Mourning said he was satisfied with that reasoning, that it made
better sense as opposed to just saying she deserves more than
others.
Johnson continued, referring back to the need for a pay structure.
“Every department head here knows somebody in their ranks that
deserves more money than the other(s); that is just the nature of
what we deal with. But there isn’t enough dollars to go around, so
we have to figure out a uniform, consistent way to pay people. It’s
not fun, but it is just a way to provide organization to all this
chaos. Previously, it was ‘you get twenty-five cents, and you don’t,
you get twenty-five cents, and you don’t.’ There is a way to
structure this so they can see that people are paid across the board
externally, and internally, fairly.”
Bauer noted a comment made earlier that not everyone deserves the
same amount. She said that there needed to be an assessment and
evaluation, so as to create a correlation between the amount (paid)
and the value of the employee.
It was noted then that the city doesn’t have a Human Resources
Department to address this, and Neitzel agreed saying that was a big
problem for the city. However, Bauer, whose background is in Human
Resources noted, “Well we do now.”
At one point in the conversation, Fulk said she would donate $500 of
her salary back to the city to be paid to Crowell. Johnson and
others noted that such an action was illegal, and the city could not
accept such an offer.
At the end of the discussion, it was not clear where the city is
going to land on the compensation for Crowell. What was clear is
that in the future, there will be steps taken to look at creating a
pay structure and an evaluation process.
It should also be noted that Crowell is currently the only city
employee who is a member of the Clerical Union. The city has sent a
letter to the representative of the union saying that with only one
member, it no longer considers the clerical staff to be a bargaining
unit. It was also noted Crowell has no desire to be a union member.
While that relationship has not been officially terminated to date,
it is expected that it will be.
The council will resume their efforts next week on Tuesday evening
with expectations of reviewing the City’s Street Department and Fire
Department budgets.
[Nila Smith] |
