Agenda - Council - 02/14/1995 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

I I I I I By: POLICE CHIEF WAGES Ryan Schroeder, City Administrator CASE #1 Background: At the January ~10, 1995 meeting Council approved wages for exempt personnel. Additionally, Council committed to discussing a further increase to the police chief position of an amount up to $2,914. In 1994 Council, approved a wage policy which stated that it was Councils intent to compensate employee groulSs on average at the midpoint after approximately seven years of service. No particular target .~eyond that was addressed other than to state that wages beyond midpoints should have a performjance component. Upon this statement Council had previously directed that performance ev~uafions on ail exempt personnel occur prior to any 1995 wage consideration. As you are aware, th. ese were in fact completed. Council had ~ requested another analysis of Ramsey wages relative to midpoints and maximums of pay grades. 'gtais is attached. You will note that AFSCME personnel currently (1/1/95) have an average tenure (~f 6.19 years. Their 1995 wages are at 99.71% of midpoint and 84.25% of grade m~ximum after [he average 4.04% pay increase for 1995. This almost perfectly reflects Council policy. The same holvds~true for Exempt personnel. Their average tenure is slightly greater than that of AFSCME at 7.~7 years. As expected, their wage comparisons are therefore slightly higher at 102.06% of mid~oint and 86.24% of grade maximums after a 4.13% average wage increase. If Council apprgves the entire additional request for the Police Chief wages, that represents a 9.17% individual increase for the year of 1995. It would also increase the above comparisons slightly to 102.~3% of midpoint for all exempt personnel and 86.81% of maximum. The total 1995 wage inereiase for exempt personnel also increases to 4.78%. It should be not.ad that in the case of police personnel for purposes of this table we used the same standard increas{~ that occurred in 1994 (2.55%). There are three persons receiving step increases in this group _b_r~nging the total wage increase for the group to 4.72%, representing 113.38% of midpoint and 93i17% of grade maximums with an average tenure of 8.03 years. This will change somewhat after the 1995 conuaet is settled. Compensation for any position needs to have a market component in order to retoin existing employees and t~ be able to recruit when that situation arises. As it relates to this issue I reviewed the 1994 Stanto, wage survey which is attached. In that survey for Police Chiefs in class 5, 6, and 7 cities the get'ual wages ranged from $31,400 to $74,600. (Ramsey is in group 6 which is cities with populations between 10,000 and 25,000, group 5 is larger cities, group 7 is smaller cities.) In 1995 gamsey will have 13 staff persons answering to the Police Chief. Cities of similar size (from 8 to~18 staff) have an average 1994 wage of $53,460 with 14.10 average staffing complement. Bis ranges from a wage of $47,400 in Forest Lake (12 staff) to $60,500 in Champlin (18 s,iaff'). The Ramsey Chief had a 1994 wage of $54,686, 1995 of $56,787 and requested additional 1995 wage of $59,701 annually. It is reasonable to assume that 1995 wages in other cities m~y have increased in the neighborhood of 3% to 4% on average. I also reviewed in somewhat more detail the wages of Chief in Elk River, Anoka and Champlin. Table 3 shows t~at the average wage of these three positions is $61,119 in 1995. Our current wage is 92.91% Of that comparison in 1995. Our pay range is similar to our neighbors. With the