Minutes 04/14/1981 - Laserfiche WebLink

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l~~6 TUESDAY APRIL 14, 1981 SALARIES AND EMPLOYEE BENEFITS Salaries and salary-setting for City employees is complicated, difficult to generalize about and not entirely within the ability of the City Council to control. These are three groupings of employees represented in the budget, with situations as follows: (1) State-controlled salaries. A number of City employees work for salaries set by the legislature, the State Compensation Board or some other state agency. These have now been set, with across-the- board increases running 9% or 10% and most of these raises will begin July 1. (2) School salaries. The School Board has set a new salary schedule, which has been publicized as "increasing by 12.9%". This should be understood as an average increase for teachers. Actually, the increase will range from 10.7% for an entry-level teacher to 15.5% for a teacher with 25 years experience. For administrators and non-professionals, the increase will be a flat 12%. (3) Salaries under the jurisdiction of the City Manager. There is pro- posed a 10% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to the City's current pay plan, which plan excludes the City Manager and the City Attorney. Since the pay plan provides for step increases, generally of 2~%, in recognition of training, experience or merit, it is possible for an individual employee to gain a l2~% increase for the year if he/she has a July anniversary date. Overall, however, salaries will increase by about 11%, within the mix of anniversary dates, turnover, etc. Since July, 1975, cost-of-living increases have been granted our folks as follows: Fiscal Year 1975-76 1976-77 1977-78 1978-79 1979-80 1980-81 % Increase 5% 5% 6% 7% 7% 10% avg. (9.4% - 10.8%) Almost any interpretation of Consumer Price Index (CPI) statistics will show that these increases over the past few years have not kept pace with inflation and that the basic buying power of our people has been eroded. I feel strongly, therefore, that the 10% COLA for next year is justified and should be approved for the employees under my jurisdiction. EXPENDITURES The budget contains hundreds of line items and thousands of different types of expenditures. There follows, by Fund, comments and clarifications about only the few that are unusual or that represent significant budgetary or policy issues. General Fund (1) Finance-Data Processing. $44,625 is proposed for system implementation-- actually the first year of our lease-purchase scheme. This amount provides for the need to substantially increase the disk space capacity of our system and includes the costs of our new software contract.