09-09-24-WS - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

ARDEN HILLS SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION— SEPTEMBER 9, 2024 9 Tessia Melvin said Council is saying they want to fix the grid immediately for hiring and retention. The implementation can be slowed down. She noted there are other ways to slow it down. Council could choose to do the COLA and everyone stays where they are. The rest could be implemented in July. She said she can keep giving different options but that is going to cause confusion. Her recommendation is to stay the course with the grid because people have seen it. If the grid starts changing, then people stop trusting the process. There are different ways to implement the changes to get to a more comfortable cost. If Council is saying that$124,000 is okay but $155,000 is too much, the implementation can be pushed to April or July or October. She can work with Finance Director Yang to come up with a scenario that keeps the budget impact at a certain dollar amount or percentage of levy impact. She has seen instances where initial discussions said one thing and Council lowered it. Employee morale goes down in those situations. The trust in the process can be lost. Councilmember Monson asked if changing from 8% above market to being at market, would change how the grid moves. Tessia Melvin confirmed. She said the grid is calibrated for 8%. Councilmember Holden said they did this three years ago and she said we are very close with only four positions below market. Tessia Melvin said the pay equity is done every three years. This is market analysis. Councilmember Holden understands but stated that is how we have adjusted the grid and COLA in the past. Sometimes it was 5% sometimes it was 3%. She thinks this option is too much money. She thinks if implementation is delayed until July, all we're doing is moving a bunch of money into next year's increase. Either way, the cost is perpetual into future years. She said all discussions have been as of January 1. She thinks people have the expectation that they are going to get what the grid says at the first of the year. No matter what changes,people will be disappointed. Mayor Grant does not think factoring in a staff vacancy as a means of cost savings is appropriate. That should not be a part of the planning process. He said moving employees to the closest step to their current wage is how he would like to see it implemented. He would not characterize this as climbing out of a hole. He said they try to true this up every three years. He wondered how far behind you can really get in three years. He stated it is up to Council if they want to implement later than January 1. Interim City Administrator Jagoe pointed to the bench handout that councilmembers received at the beginning of the meeting. She had Finance Director Yang use Option 1 and the $155,000 based on her understanding of the council direction to look at employees doing the market analysis. That analysis showed which positions should be reclassified and then having those employees retain their tenure and moving them into the scale. She wanted to be clear; that was what Council is seeing with the $155,000. Councilmember Rousseau would like to see the difference if implementation was moved to July.