Members of the City of Warsaw Common Council clashed Monday night over 2016 pay raises, specifically for department heads including the police chief.
By Indiana Code, the council had to approve its general salary and fire territory salary ordinances by Nov. 1. It has until Dec. 31 to approve the elected officials salary ordinance.
During the Oct. 19 meeting, the council approved the general salary ordinance on first reading by a vote of 4 to 1, with Councilwoman Cindy Dobbins opposed and Elaine Call absent. The fire territory salary ordinance was unanimously approved 5-0 on Oct. 19 on first reading. No action was taken on the elected official salary ordinance because of a failure to get a majority vote of 4 on a motion.
But Monday night, the council approved 4-2 to amend the ordinances to limit department head raises to 2 percent, with Councilmen Jeff Grose and Diane Quance opposed to the amendments.
Mayor Joe Thallemer started the conversation on the second reading of the general salary ordinance by stating Indiana Code 36-8-33 requires that the annual compensation of all members shall be fixed by the legislative body no later than Nov. 1 of each year for the ensuing budget year.
“So tonight’s the deadline,” he said.
If the legislative body fails to adopt an ordinance fixing the compensation of its members of the police and fire departments, the Board of Public Works and Safety may fix their compensation subject to change by ordinance.
In May, Thallemer reminded the council, Councilmen Diane Quance and the late Charlie Smith, appointed by the mayor, began meeting with Human Resources Director Jennifer Whitaker. They spent five months looking at current wages, current and past salary studies, current salary surveys and other issues. At the July 27 meeting, the committee presented a recommendation to the full council on salary increases for review.
The committee looked at making salaries more competitive and reviewed wages of certain staff that were deemed inadequate by their department heads, and at salaries of department heads and elected officials that the committee viewed as undercompensated. The committee decided on a 2 percent increase for 2016 and developed additional increases for perceived pay inadequacies, Thallemer said. He recommended the council accept the recommendations of the salary committee.
Grose thanked Thallemer for his leadership on this and the committee’s work. He told Whitaker he’s been talking to her for over a decade to “try and clean this up and make it better not only for this board but also for the taxpayers of the community,” which in turn benefits every department of the city. “A fair wage. Leveling it. It’s just the right thing,” Grose said.
Thallemer said the committee didn’t look at the individual employees but the position. Quance explained how they looked at positions and categorized them. Where departments were losing employees is where the city was underpaying, she said, noting that the salary ordinances for next year were a good starting point to fix the problem.
Councilman Mike Klondaris was the first to state he had a problem with the recommendation, saying, “I don’t know what to make of this because when I looked at this I felt there were some inequities and I know it’s not going to be equal for everybody, but I thought there was some excessive salary increases here. And I want our workers to make a living wage, but I thought some of the salary increases were too much. Too much.”
He said some cities and town aren’t even giving increases next year, and the county is only giving a 1 percent pay increase.
Dobbins said she also had a few concerns, especially “in the department head area there seems to be a few very, very large (increases) to me.”
Call said, “Specifically on human resources and police department, there has to be a rationale on the chief – why there was a 12 percent increase.”
That would bring the chief’s biweekly salary to $2,515.03, according to figures from the wage committee.
Quance explained that the committee reviewed salary studies, looked at same-size towns and took the median point of those figures, which is the same thing the committee did for all other positions.
“I think all department heads and all these departments should be getting the same increase. Two percent is what I thought,” Call responded.
Quance explained that the committee started by looking at the 2014-15 salary ordinance for the department heads, and if it was low, they added to it to make it competitive and then added the 2 percent salary increase for 2016. “We did it for several positions, not just those two,” she said.
Call asked what the other positions were that reflected more of an increase, and Quance recalled the clerk-treasurer, the police chief and human resources.
On July 27, when Whitaker made her presentation, Thallemer said it showed the positions making increases of over 2 percent, and then showed it again at the last meeting.
Call said she wanted to see an amendment to the salary ordinances limiting increases to 2 percent.
Councilman Jerry Frush said that while he had no objection to giving workers a raise, he was against giving supervisors increases over 2 percent.
Klondaris said the process was “so frustrating” to him and he didn’t know if he previously was aware of the percentage of some of the increases. He said he couldn’t justify the large increases, and some of them “shocked” him once he realized what they were. Dobbins agreed, saying it was hard to give a 12-percent raise.
Grose argued that some of the supervisors manage budgets of over $4 million and deal with 40 to 50 employees, but he, as a department head at Warsaw Community Schools, makes as much or more than some of the department heads for the city.
At one point, Thallemer said he couldn’t believe that after all the discussion and information given to the council before Monday that they weren’t ready to approve the recommendation the committee provided them.
Call made a motion to amend the general salary ordinance limiting department heads to no more than a 2 percent raise. Dobbins, Klondaris and Frush voted with Call to approve it.
On the fire territory salary ordinance, the fire chief was to get a raise of about 3 percent but the same 4-2 vote lowered that to 2 percent. The elected officials salary ordinance was limited to a 2 percent increase, too, but will need approval on a second reading.
(Story By The Times Union)