Fixing the Maxium Salary for the City Attorney

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OFFICE OF THE MAYOR CITY of SOUTH BEND ROGER O. PARENT, Mayor COUNTY-CITY BUILDING SOUTH BEND, INDIANA 46601 August 18, 1982 AREA 219 284 -9261 Members of the Common Council Council Chambers 4th Floor, County -City Building South Bend, Indiana 46601 Dear Council Members: The attached ordinances providing for additional compensation to the City Attorney and City Engineer seek to make explicit and to authorize the compensation which I believe is appropriate for increased duties they have undertaken for the Department of Redevelopment and the Bureau of Water Works respectively. Both the Redevelopment Commission and Board of Water Works Commis- sioners will forward to you records of their formal action authorizing that these increased amounts be paid from their funds. The particular individuals involved in these ordinances are not unique. As you are aware, in previous years - of my administration as well as administrations of my predecessors - mayors have recognized the need to award additional compensation to City employees who assumed specific, increased duties. The traditional method of making this in- crease effective has been to authorize payment to the employee based on the existing line item in the salary ordinance. This was believed to be within the provisions of the law. The tradition grew out of a combination of problems which have served to cause confusion and which lead to my submitting these ordinances to you today: the lack of provision for merit increases when employees are being paid the maximum for their salary classification; the expectation that public employees must be content with the salary allotted to them regardless of how many additional duties come their way during the budget year or during their tenure in office; and the funding of the City's operation from a variety of sources, leading to an ever decreasing percen- tage of the City budget from the general fund, with an increasing amount coming from utilities revenues, special state accounts, and a variety of federal sources. With a major portion of the City budget being comprised of personnel costs, it is not surprising that a certain number of personnel, partic- ularly central support staff, would be funded at least partially from more than one source, just as other City costs are absorbed from a variety