Sean C. Morgan
Following a discussion at the city’s Budget Committee meeting on May 2, city councilors will likely discuss freezing the wages of city employees who are not represented by unions – primarily supervisory staff members and department heads.
Times are tough, said Councilor Greg Mahler, who made it clear he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of giving raises under the current economic conditions.
He added that the city needs to take a look at insurance benefits.
In the 2012-13 budget, Police Department employees will receive a 3-percent general wage increase. General city employees and employees not represented by a union will receive a new 3-percent step based on merit following an evaluation.
The city cannot freeze the wages of union-represented employees without bargaining, but it could freeze the wages of non-represented employees.
“I cannot sit here and argue why I feel the employees deserve more money while the community is suffering,” said Councilor Scott McKee Jr. “I have a hard time going out into the community and justifying it (giving raises).”
At Safeway, where he worked, employees have had to deal with three years with no raises and counting every paper clip, McKee said.
“We are suffering, and we’re really having a hard time right now,” McKee said. With all of the cuts, including no savings into the Building Reserve Fund, the city should freeze all of the pay that it can right now.
Budget Committee member Dave Trask said it is difficult to tell the people of Sweet Home that the city is concerned about funding and then grant raises. Employees with Weyerhaeuser or Les Schwab may not get raises this year. Trask said his last raise before retiring from CenturyLink was 1 percent.
“It would set a good precedent,” Trask said of freezing wages. “Do they deserve a raise? I don’t know. Probably do, I guess. The bottom line is, as a Budget Committee, I think it would be irresponsible not to bring this to the attention of the City Council.”
Former Budget Committee member and Mayor Dave Holley agreed: “What I think I see is that the councilors think they have an obligation to hold the line where they can hold the line.” Councilors brought the issue to the Budget Committee’s attention, looking for a consensus to take to the council, rather than the council simply adopting a budget with a freeze with no discussion from the Budget Committee.
All salaries are indexed to maintain a differential between supervisors and the employees they supervise, said City Manager Craig Martin. Freezing salaries would change that differential, which was set by council policy in the late 1990s.
“I don’t want to set a policy that binds a council 15 years down the road,” Holley said. That policy can be changed by the council.
Budget Committee member Gerrit Schaffer said the raises for non-represented employees amounts to about $26,000. In context of the $22 million budget it’s not a large amount of money. He said he is in the middle on whether the wages should be frozen.
Committee member Bruce Hobbs said it might make sense to use that money to restore a position, like the half-time position at the library; but he is kind of on the fence regarding a wage freeze.
Police Chief Bob Burford, whose department has faced increasing revenue shortfalls due to compression in the last year, said he is open to a freeze on his salary, but not for his department’s supervisors.
“If the council asked me or my boss (Martin), I don’t have a problem with that,” he said. The Police Department’s two sergeants and communications supervisors are holding the department together, working their shifts and then staying on call constantly while off-duty to help deal with the department’s staffing shortage, he said.
Burford asked that the committee and council grant wage increases for his department, especially since patrol officers in some other cities actually make more than Sweet Home’s sergeants.
Mayor Craig Fentiman asked the Budget Committee to leave the funding for the positions alone so that the council will have the option to decide whether to grant the raises or freeze wages.
Present during the discussion were councilors Fentiman, Marybeth Angulo, Jim Gourley, Mike Hall, McKee and Mahler and committee members Andrew Allen, Chuck Begley, Hobbs, Greg Korn, Schaffer and Trask.