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Citizens ask council to freeze salaries to fix U. City budget
(by Jenny Fisher - June 23, 2010)
Personnel cost is the biggest single item in the $43 million budget of cash-strapped University City, coming in at $21 million, or nearly half of all expenditures.
As the council faces a $2.4 million deficit in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2011 (including $1 million for a proposed grant match to buy up flood-prone homes on Wilson Avenue), those costs are at the top of the minds of many citizens, who have repeatedly raised concerns over employee compensation.
Though city officials and council members haven’t said they were considering personnel cuts, citizens at a June 7 budget hearing complained about the amount employees are paid in comparison to nearby cities, certain employees driving city cars and the number of high-level positions in each department.
“Throughout our country, people are losing their jobs every day and subsequently losing their homes,” said U. City resident Elsie Glickert. “Salary increases are not justified since our salaries and benefits are very generous and equitable.” She asked that the city “please freeze all salaries and steps at last year’s level.”
In fiscal year 2010, the city did not apply its traditional cost-of-living adjustment to employee salaries, said finance director and interim city manager Janet Watson, and will not do so again in fiscal year 2011. But employees who were scheduled for step raises continue to receive the merit-based pay increases. As is common with many governments, University City raises employee pay in steps on a yearly basis (up to a maximum rate set for the position) so long as performance is satisfactory.
Glickert also suggested that the city “economize by changing titles,” returning higher-level employees to lower titles and therefore lower salaries, like sergeants who became lieutenants. “These are inflated salaries and inflated pensions and they are cosmetic titles,” she said.
In a similar vein, Mayor Shelley Welsch told voters during her campaign that she would consider limiting the number of higher-level department heads on staff and implementing furloughs to save money. “I was saying we might have some tough decisions about how to do some infrastructural changes,” Welsch said. But, she added, “It is not something that the majority of council has been talking about.”
Paulette Carr, a longtime critic of city expenditures and leader of the petition drive to audit University City, suggested that the city freeze 2011 spending at the level of fiscal year 2010. “We should not be giving cost-of-living increases, nor should the council be giving across-the-board pay increases,” she said, explaining that the city should not increase the pay ranges for any city employees for the time being. “Quite frankly, in this economy, I don’t even think people should be getting step raises,” she said. “The government exists to provide services at a fair price, not necessarily the highest price.”
Carr cited a survey University City participated in last year that compared city salary ranges to more than 40 other municipalities in the state, which showed that all but one of the 30 positions in the survey were paid within the top 50 percent among cities that responded, and most were within the top 25 percent. Specifically, University City’s director of public works, director of parks and recreation, mechanics and equipment operators were paid better than 90 percent of the other cities surveyed.
When the survey was conducted, University City was striving to pay its employees in the top 20 percent compared to other cities surveyed, Watson explained. But, she added, because the city had gone two years without cost-of-living increases, that benchmark was “kind of out the window.”
University City let go about 20 employees a few years ago, and has let about 20 more positions go unfilled due to attrition or retirement, Watson said. Last summer, the city council voted to join a health insurance pool through the St. Louis Area Insurance Trust in order to save money on employee health insurance. Previously, University City acted as its own broker. Now, the city and about 15 other municipalities have joined together to contract with United Healthcare.
“We’ve hoping to divide our risk among a greater pool of employees, so an individual city doesn’t have the ups and downs of their own claims,” Watson said.
When it comes to employee costs, citizens have also repeatedly raised concerns over employees who drive city cars but don’t live within University City. Department directors and the city manager are required to live in the city, although the city council can waive the residency requirement for department directors. Watson said that currently three department directors live in the city and four do not, including the fire chief, who drives a city-provided vehicle.
“I would anticipate for the next fiscal year as we look at mileage reimbursements and all of those employee benefit policies that that issue may come up,” Welsch said. But, she said, it wasn’t on the table for fiscal year 2011.
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