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City salary study to cost up to $85,000
Published 10:22pm Monday, November 16, 2009By AUSTIN PHILLIPS / City Editor
PELHAM — In a 3-2 vote, the Pelham City Council approved a resolution Monday night for a comprehensive salary study for city employees that could cost up to $85,000.
The proposal was granted to Mercer, Inc., and the study is intended to provide a more defined pay structure for the approximate 300 city employees, which make up nearly 65 percent of the annual budget.
The study is expected to take five to six months.
The resolution previously failed to pass on Oct. 5, with council members Teresa Nichols and Bill Meadows voting for the study, members Steve Powell and Karyl Rice voting against the study and council president Mike Dickens abstaining from the vote.
Dickens abstained from the vote on Oct. 5 because he said he had not studied it enough.
However, he did say he was adamantly for the study, and voted for the resolution Monday.
Powell argued the study could be conducted internally through the human resources department without the city paying $85,000.
“I do have a belief that our human resources department can or can’t perform this task,” Powell said.
If the study could not be conducted internally, Powell said then the city should look at contracting it out, but not before doing so through a bid process just like every other capital venture.
“I would at least ask the council to get other bids,” Powell said.
Rice agreed.
“We have not placed this up for a bid situation,” Rice said.
And with the amount being a number like $85,000, Rice said the city would be hypocritical spending such an amount.
“We have been told over, over, over that we need to save money because revenues are down,” Rice said.
Since Mercer has conducted the same study for municipalities such as Hoover, Shelby County, Baldwin County and Knoxville, Meadows said the study would end up saving the city money by cutting the 65 percent in the budget.
Meadows said this would be done not by cutting current salaries, but by identifying positions that are both paid too low and paid too high and providing solutions on how to balance them out, while also staying competitive in the market.
“It’s based on the market, hard numbers,” Meadows said. “It’s not sticking my finger in the air and seeing what salaries should be.
“Let’s start at this facet,” he added.
They (Council Majority) already know they want the scale that Mercer did for Hoover. Why not just copy Hoover’s and save the 85,000? Who on the Council has a connection to this Mercer group? Why didn’t they bid this out?
I don’t think we need to be making our city less competitive. We already have an excellent group of employees and low turnover. We shouldn’t be doing things that are going to cost us good people over time. I’m sure they need to adjust the scale, but it’s pretty well known they want to cut the future public safety workers’s pay and have it take longer to reach a top pay that won’t change all that much, while increasing some administrator’s pay. This group is shoving even more good ol boy politics down our throats!
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The study has not even been done, but Councilman Meadows already knows that it will CUT personnel costs??? Why pay $85,000 for a study when Meadows knows the results already???
Has Meadows made a deal with Mercer to make sure that the study will find that compensation needs to be cut? Even if Mercer says that personnel are being paid TOO MUCH, how do you cut the budget unless you get rid of those who are overpaid and replace them with someone who will work for a lower wage?
Meadows comments from the article:
Since Mercer has conducted the same study for municipalities such as Hoover, Shelby County, Baldwin County and Knoxville, Meadows said the study would end up saving the city money by cutting the 65 percent in the budget.
Meadows said this would be done not by cutting current salaries, but by identifying positions that are both paid too low and paid too high and providing solutions on how to balance them out, while also staying competitive in the market.
“It’s based on the market, hard numbers,” Meadows said. “It’s not sticking my finger in the air and seeing what salaries should be.
“Let’s start at this facet,” he added.
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