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U. City council members challenge pay process
(by Heather Wadsworth - July 02, 2008)
The University City City Council approved the 2009 budget at its most recent meeting but got hung up in a debate about how pay increases should be awarded.
A bill was introduced that could give city officials, employees, fire captains and firefighters a 2.4 percent cost-of-living increase if the bill is approved at a special meeting in July. Prior to the bill’s introduction, council members debated the process by which a pay increase should be presented to council.
Lynn Ricci, council member for the 2nd Ward, and Robert Wagner, council member for the 3rd Ward, asked for this bill to be removed from the agenda.
Ricci said that the city charter requires the Civil Service Board to present pay increases to council and also calls for the human resources department to recommend the pay raises based on research of other cities’ pay rates.
However, Ricci said, the civil service board is not currently active, and no one has been elected to the board since 1996, despite the fact that the charter calls for elections every three years.
Ricci recommended that the council wait to approve the pay increases but give a 2.4 percent increase on each check until the council would be able to approve the pay increase legally.
She also expressed concern about the city’s employee benefits, stating that the city has no deductible for its health insurance and that most life-insurance policies are in an amount that is two times greater than an employee’s salary. She said that U. City employees receive a three-week vacation when hired, which is one week more than employees of other cities receive.
“We can’t keep giving increases across the board, [we] … need to give them based on merit,” Ricci said.
Wagner emphasized that he and Ricci were primarily questioning the process of giving pay raises.
“We did this because [of] the procedure it was presented in,” Wagner said. “It’s not worthy of the diligence of this council.”
When put to a vote, Ricci and Wagner voted against keeping the bill on the agenda, but the majority of the council voted in favor of it. The bill proposing the cost-of-living pay increase was voted on and approved.
In an interview, Deputy City Manager Janet Watson said she believes the council is following the city charter in all matters.
The council passed a resolution approving the budget for the 2009 year. Wagner was the only council member to vote against the resolution. Ricci left the meeting early due to an emergency.
At the same meeting, the council agreed to allocate $1,000 of the community-development block grant to the maintenance of the Sutter-Meyer house, the city’s oldest known residence. The money will go toward new windows, tuckpointing and insulation.
The money given to the Sutter-Meyer house was reallocated from $6,000 that was budgeted for recreation-program scholarships. Recreation scholarships are based on income and given to individuals who live in specified areas. The city will still give scholarships as needed but will not be reimbursed for more than $5,000 by the federal government’s CDBG program.
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