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ARDEN HILLS SPECIAL CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION — SEPTEMBER 9, 2024 11 Interim City Administrator Jagoe clarified that, in the $155,000 option, an employee who is at Step 5 would move to Step 2. You retain that tenure step but it's still a drop of three. Councilmember Holden said no one is losing any money. The only thing happening is shifting the grid to allow three more steps. Mayor Grant clarified that employees will not receive a step increase on January 1 but rather on their anniversary. Tessia Melvin confirmed. The step increase will happen at the employee's anniversary. Councilmember Holden thought from the initial discussions, one of the reasons January 1 was selected was because it made it much easier to implement. Now you will have people on two different grids throughout the year. That was the reason Council chose January 1 to change the grid system. Mayor Grant said Council needs to land somewhere. Tessia Melvin summarized that she isn't hearing a decision has been made. She hears that the cost needs to come down from $155,000. She can come back with some options. She asked for direction on what should be changed so she can come back with more options. Mayor Grant would like to maintain Option 1 at $124,000. Councilmember Rousseau would be interested to see what it would look like if there were two grids and employees would move to the new grid at their anniversary. Discussion ensued regarding what is included in the calculations. The $124,000 just included the wages. Including benefits, it would be a higher amount. Councilmember Monson asked what the levy impact is, as a percentage, based on what dollar amount. Finance Director Yang replied that approximately every $27,000 equals 0.5% impact on the levy. Councilmember Holden stated the union employees haven't negotiated their contract. She said they aren't going to agree to less than what the non -union employees are getting. She asked what the increase will be if union employees are given the same increase. Finance Director Yang said the amount in the budget right now is 3%. She could calculate what a larger increase will mean and bring the numbers back. Councilmember Fabel asked if the COLA is calculated into the wage on January 1.