02-13-12 Common Council Meeting Minutes

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REGULAR MEETING FEBRUARY 13, 2012 Councilmember White, Chairperson, Personnel & Finance Committee, reported that this committee held a Public Hearing on this bill this afternoon and due to lack of time in committee are continuing discussions of this bill in the Committee of Whole. th Mayor Pete Buttigieg, 14 Floor County-City Building, 227 W. Jefferson Blvd., South Bend, Indiana, made the presentation for this bill. Mayor Butigieg advised that the purpose of this bill is to update certain job titles and to bring the pay caps for certain key city positions more into line with what they are in other states. There was not an opportunity to share the date on these slides during the committee meetings. He stated that he wanted to clarify for the benefit of the public what they are doing. He stated that he is asking for the opportunity to update the salaries for City Controller, City Engineer, City Attorney, Director of Public Works, Executive Director of Community and Economic Development, Director of Human Resources and the Director of Information & Technology, in order to make them more competitive. He stated that they are also making a number of changes to titles that do not have any accompanying changes or increases in salary. This is because the title for any job is actually set by ordinance and to change the title for example an assistant to the mayor to a chief of state even with no increase in pay requires and action of the Council. He stated that they are also creating a position of Deputy City Controller, but this does not add to the staff of the City Controller it takes from a Director of City Finance slots and converts it to a Chief Deputy in that department. Mayor Buttigieg stated that as you might be aware he likes data and charts, so he presented a power point presentation (a copy of which is on file in the Office of the City Clerk) and what this power point represents is that his office has pulled together some data from other cities as well as some other numbers that are relevant to this bill. He stated that the averages are from the Cities Anderson, Bloomington, Evansville, Ft. Wayne and Hammond. He stated that with the exception of Ft. Wayne those cities are around the size of South Bend. Anderson is quite a bit smaller, but when you take a look at what they allow themselves to compensate these key positions compared to South Bend you will often find that we are behind. He stated that there are some out of state cities, just for comparison, similarly size or otherwise comparable from Illinois, and New York. The BLS median is based on Bureau of Labor Statistics Data who are people in the workforce in general comparable roles and might expect to be paid. Mayor Buttigieg stated that he would like to make one other thing clear and by looking at the data it looks like the City Attorney is grievously underpaid and that he is asking to institute a massive salary increase, bear in mind that is currently a part-time position and he is now requesting that position be made a full-time position, so it is actually not even a pay increase when you look at it on a per hour basis. He stated that the reason that he is asking for this is because these are positions where he either found that there is difficulty recruiting somebody to take the position or the job description is changing in terms of what his administration expects of the person in that position prior to what was previously expected or both. He stated that it was the discovery that we are all being paid substantially less than even smaller communities for similar work that lead him to realize that they may have a recruiting challenge in staffing some key outstanding departments in the future and by the future he means the very near future because he would like to get a lot of these positions filled immediately. He stated that a good example is the Director of Public Works. Mayor Buttigieg stated that he is trying to replace a retiring Director of Public Works who widely regarded as one of the best in the United States and are trying to do it at a salary that is considerably lower than what a Director of Public Works working in another city even a smaller city like Anderson can expect to make. Another thing that is very important to understand is that this bill is already paid for and does not involve adding one penny to general fund expenditures it does not involve adding one penny to taxes. This draws on a line item that was passed by the previous Council and is a matter of fact comes $100,000 below what the Council appropriated. He wanted to make sure that everyone understands that this is not new spending. He is asking for the flexibility to use those salary caps in an adjusted fashion and to spend the budget according to how it was passed last year. He also wanted to stress that he is not asking for us to pay these positions the way that they are paid in the private sector. There is an understanding that public servants are often compensated quite a bit less than there counterparts in the private sector. He stated that all is asking for is a chance to make it closer to what the rest of the public sector pays in 8