10-23-17 Personnel and Finance - Laserfiche WebLink

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finishing up most of the normalization. There was a lot of discussion on this year's increases. There were many comparisons with other cities as well as the private sector. These are just the caps and they will not get right up to the maximum. Councilmember Davis followed up, So will they be budgeted for the maximum or the actual? Ms. Hockenhull replied, We will budget close the actual. Councilmember Davis followed up, I'm clear about that but that is where my concern comes in. It is very clear with the two percent (2%) raises. We have a wide range of increases and that is my concern. I think there are too many wide ranges for me to feel comfortable approving this. The rate we set for our salaries affect other entities and when those entities see these raises it affects them, and that is my concern. Many of us were not privileged to those comparisons and the benchmarking. What cities are we talking about? Ms. Hockenhull replied, We did provide explanations for the raises we are requesting in various formats. They were discussed in the public meetings. We may not have given specific comparisons for one (1) individual position. Councilmember Davis interrupted, That is what I am saying. Yes, you gave a presentation on it but when it comes to specific salaries,we had to really search them out and do our own homework. This happened last year. A lot of the focus last year was on the Clerk's salary but behind that was a lot of other positions that we had to go back and deal with. It appears there is a smokescreen. Ms. Hockenhull replied, We did provide summary information on Saturday regarding the specific questions that have been asked. If you have more specific questions I'm happy to get more information. Councilmember Davis interrupted,And that is my concern. At 6:25 a.m. on Saturday and I saw that come through in an e-mail. My concern is the turnaround time. To have these decisions,the email that gave us the information needs to be provided day one (1)before all the presentations. That is not fair. Ms. Hockenhull replied, I appreciate your comments. We will try to amend the budget process. It is an evolving process and will take your comments into consideration. Committeemember Voorde stated, I would like to thank John Murphy along with the Admin and Finance Office. I think the term transparency quickly becomes over-used. However, I see now the term is coming to fruition.Now more than ever, if you want to know something, you can find it and I think that is credit to all the departments. I think the departments are more professional now more than ever. Data-driven decision-making can leave me uneasy at times but there is still opportunity for human-input from both City employees and neighborhood organizations. 9