Item 1C, 2008 Proposed Compensation Plan

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~ ~~HILLS MEMORANDUM DATE: TO: FROM: SUBJECT: November 19, 2007 AGENDA ITEM: 1.c. Mayor and City Council Michelle Wolfe, City Administrator ~ Pay Equity and Compensation Study BACKGROUND At the September 17 City Council Work Session, the City's compensation consultant, Mr. Rod Kelsey, presented pay equity and compensation plan information. A follow-up discussion was scheduled for September 24. At the conclusion of that discussion, Council directed that a subcommittee of the Council work with staff and Mr. Kelsey to develop a recommendation back to the full Council. DISCUSSION At the September 24 Work Session, Council discussed which quartile should be used for market comparisons. The City has not had a clear stated policy in the past regarding which quartile of the market should be used for comparisons. While there was consensus from Council that the 60th percentile would be a goal to work toward, Council concluded that it could not accomplish that goal in one year. Council also discussed the desire to be competitive in the local government marketplace and a discussion ensured regarding what constituted a comparable jurisdiction. Council discussed separating Level 13, City Administrator, from the rest of the plan. Finally, the Council requested new matrices that were more closely tied to the market survey data. Council also asked that the new matrices be prepared based on the 55th percentile. The Council subcommittee met with City staff and the consultant on November 9. At that meeting, the group reviewed revised market-based pay matrices using the 55th percentile. In other words, the range maximums were based on a percentage of the survey market data. The difference between each pay grade was not an equal percentage (previous drafts were constructed with an equal percentage between each pay grade). The subcommittee was comfortable with this approach. After discussing the topic of comparison communities, the subcommittee decided to remove Shoreview from the list. Shoreview has not been used in previous studies for the City; it was suggested during a work session this past summer that we should include them for study purposes.