Welcome to the Tuesday September September 23rd Finance Utilities Rules Committee meeting.

We have a number of constituents and employees in the room.

So we're going to start off this meeting by public comment.

Just uh some ground rules real quick.

Um we try to keep public comment to three minutes.

So when whoever liked to step up first, and then uh if you had a particular order you wanted to go in, just come up and press the button.

It looks like it's already pressed.

The the red light there will show that um that we can that you're being recorded and that your voice is being amplified.

You're the green um the green light will uh show green while you have your three minutes.

Yellow will give you a brief warning, and then red says when you're three uh three minutes up, or not to me hard and fast, but it's just a way to try to get through the get through all the comments in an efficient manner.

So whoever would like to speak first, please uh approach the podium.

Just state your name, please, for the record.

I apologize, I am not a public speaker.

Uh hello, my name is Jim Spelpring.

I'm a Carmel resident and a 45 year employee of the city of Carmel.

I'm speaking for myself, but I believe the other nine street department employees here tonight would agree with my concerns.

I had questions about the salary study that was conducted.

We were told in a letter that our department was being paid basically the same as other street departments around us.

To me, that was a slap in the face.

I am not sure that everyone knows what we do.

Our department does more than just plowing snow and paving roads, and I must say we do a great job at doing both.

Ask our residents who live in Carmel and work in Marion County.

We do more, including watering flowers, emptying trash cans, all festivals throughout the year, including setting up and tearing down the Christmas market, building huts, ice rinks, fixing potholes, parking garages, install signs and banners.

We take care of fountains and irrigations in the roundabouts, statues, repair storm inlets, and then also natural disasters and more.

This is just a few of the things that we do, not everything.

We also do uh other jobs for other departments, including building offices, moving city offices, hanging TVs, hanging artwork, and more projects that are asked of us.

We are not equal to me, we are above and beyond.

We are working a lot of hours with no overtime opportunities.

I'm sure all the civilian employees feel the same about their duties.

We are grateful to receive comp time, but comp time does not help pay the bills.

Thank you for all the time you have devoted toward the budget process.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Any other public like to come speak.

I would agree that we have the best street department in the state and probably the nation.

So thank you for all of what you do.

And um, but the the core um the core core concern of the matter is specifically the uh loss of uh ability to crew overtime.

Is that is that the core matter?

I just want to make sure I understood that correctly.

Well, yeah, I believe so.

And then also you got it, yeah.

I just want to make sure we and on the committee fully understand.

Um, yes, I believe so.

That's uh a good part of it, but then uh we feel that uh the salary study was not very accurate.

I don't know where this study came from or who conducted it, but like I said, you know, uh we feel that our department does more than what others do, and we're being paid the same.

So the overtime, yes, is an issue.

Um I'm sure it is with all the other city employees, the other departments.

Um so there's nine of us here from the street and other departments, so we're just you know concerned about that.

You know, we're just wondering why can't we?

Why not us?

And with all the hours that we all are working, not only street, but everybody.

Yeah, you know, it's a concern.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Chairman?

Yes, sir.

Um so um I think so.

Jim, are you planning on staying through the whole meeting?

As long as it's done by 10.

Uh so because I guess so I'm I I'm I have more questions for you, but I I in fairness, I need to probably hear the presentation because I'm in the dark on this.

So please don't leave.

Okay.

Okay.

And I would ask uh the indulgence of the chair that I'd be allowed to ask some questions if I need some clarification.

Thank you.

Of course.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So we'll close in uh public comment, though we will have some.

Oh, yes.

Come on up.

Sorry.

No, you're fine, I just made it.

I wasn't I wasn't going to speak.

I'm uh Karen Sutton with the Karma Police Department.

Um I'm a 20-year employee here.

Um small break in between cupcakes, it makes sense.

Um kind of to echo what Jim had said as well.

Um I think kind of the way we feel with our sworn counterparts is um as we all know they had that um very large um raise.

Uh I typically benefit or I do benefit from that because I'm married to a fireman, so I am very much in favor, and I agree with everything that they have gotten.

Um, but a I think we all need to be raised up as well.

Um the way we kind of think about it in our division specifically is we're the safest city in um in the state, really.

We're uh constantly ranked number one throughout the nation.

So our police and fire aren't directly paid because of what they may or may not experience.

Um we are all paid because of our professionalism, our training, what we do have to do to go out and do the job.

Um we specifically as CSIs have always had um our compensation package directly in line with our sergeants, and we now have seen this vast difference.

Um as you all know, we go out and we see the worst of the worst, um, walk through the worst of the worst, take it back home to our homes.

Um I just spent eight hours at 19th and Tibbs last weekend, uh, or excuse me, last week where somebody was murdered um in July, and I didn't see a lot of my counterparts there, but I'm not paid to the same level.

Um so I think that's kind of where we are, and what we had talked about too, that we all work for the city, we all are expected when we get hired here, you're told that we are carmel, and we're proud to be carmel, and we're gonna raise you up to this carmel standard, but we're not seeing that back to us.

Um we're the highest, we're the highest trained, we appreciate we love the job that we do, but we're not seeing that now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Chair.

Yes.

So um question now, do you want to do it later?

Uh what's that?

I had a question, a follow-up question for Zach about one of the comments.

Zach, which departments receive overtime or which ones don't?

Um, so with regards to um fire department, that's obviously our biggest uh user of overtime because of the the mandatory um uh staffing ratios, um, and so we accrue a ton of overtime at at the fire department.

We're on we're on track to spend probably close to five million dollars this year on on overtime there, and that's why we've made the significant investment in the budget to to uh train more uh uh new recruits and lateral recruits so that we can get the overtime down.

Um but again there's a large number of of not only scheduled mandatory overtime but also people picking up shifts to to get that uh to cover the minimum staffing requirements.

Uh CPD has some um uh uh mandatory overtime as well, but not nearly the same amounts.

Um in regards to uh other departments, we are trying to do our best to manage those expenses down just to uh to save dollars so that we can buy down expenses for for next year when all possible.

So is it just police and fire?

Because I know we like just today we heard that Brookshire had their overtime reduced but not eliminated.

So there are depart other departments do have overtime paid out, right?

Yeah, I I with with regards to Brookshire, and I don't I don't know if you guys know this better.

Um, and they have different uh there are literally different laws um on FLSA and how they accrue over time at public golf courses.

And so there is something slightly different there, but we it's it's one employee that's besides that one employee and besides police fire, there's no no one else getting paid overtime in the city.

I can't say for sure that there's none, but we do everything we can to manage it to as close to zero as possible.

So is there overtime uh planned for in these budgets?

Or uh I mean just I wanted to get it because they're they were saying other departments are getting over time, I'm just wondering which ones those might be.

I I'm not sure.

I mean, I could run the report, but but we've been trying to manage it down at all departments.

Okay.

Okay, maybe we might have some um clarity from uh the presentation, some more clarity from the presentation before we go into more questions.

Yes, sir.

Well, um I'm actually gonna turn most of this over to the uh HR department to talk through the presentation today.

Um I'll probably jump back in with uh with the uh fiscal impact slide at the end, but otherwise I'll turn it over to uh Nicole and Christy.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, since I know you are completely in the dark, I'm gonna pretend like I'm talking just to you, because I think some of you up here have bits and pieces, so I'm glad somebody knows nothing.

So I'm gonna talk like this is completely new information.

So this salary study kicked off in 2024, and I would imagine, and I don't know this for sure, most of the scoping took place in 2023 as the uh dollars were appropriated in the 2024 budget.

So before I was here while the former director was here, it did kick off, and they contracted with a company called NFP, and most of the initial data was used early on in 2025 for the um sworn positions.

That was what, yeah.

When was that contracted contract executed with MFP?

2024.

Okay.

We had a PO that uh no costs were allocated to in 2024, and then it rolled over and and we paid for some of that PO in 2025.

Okay.

Uh so the NFP data was used in what we are sort of dubbing phase one, and that was the sworn positions, and they used that information to help create the matrix and use that in the union negotiations piece, which happened before I was here, sort of wrapping up as I came on about a year ago.

So phase two, as it was supposed to initially determined, was that NFP was gonna take job descriptions and then do that same analysis for uh civilian positions.

And it was determined that our job descriptions were not up to date, which is very common.

Um job descriptions are difficult to keep up to date.

It's not anybody's first priority.

So for lack of better phrasing, it was determined it was garbage in, garbage out, and we knew that those job descriptions weren't going to be didn't accurately reflect what our people do.

So we sort of paused, I came on board and just decided what do we want to do.

We didn't want to give the job descriptions as they were to NFP and keep going with that.

So we paused and changed the scope.

And because the scope changed so much, we um did not finish the work with NFP.

We used the data that they had already done, and then we we just decided we needed to start over with the JAQ process, which is um we put together a timeline to help you all understand what happened in 2025.

We announced in was it November at the all employee meetings?

November, I think November, doesn't matter, 2024 that we would be um starting the salary study in like first quarter 2025, picking up phase two.

So in February, uh we sent out an email to all full-time civilian employees and explained how the JAQ process was going to work.

And I just want to take a minute and thank everybody for the hard work on that.

That was not a good time for anybody.

They our employees put in a lot of time and effort, and it was really reflected in in the how thorough the JAQs were, how much pride everybody has in their job.

So uh thank you for all of that great information.

Made our jobs a little easier.

Because we had some people who needed an extension for various reasons.

A follow-up email was sent on March 19th, allowing some extensions saying we absolutely had to have them back by March 21st.

From there, uh the we dug in like elbows deep in the JAQs, right?

We were I say we, but it was mostly Christy.

Uh 300 plus JQs.

That was a that was a lot of analysis that went into that.

So as we were reading through the JAQs, uh, that is when we went to employees if we had questions, we met with department heads to to get their take and get insight if we needed it.

But really the JAQs were very well done.

So we didn't actually have as much of that as we anticipated originally.

Mid-April through early May, uh, we brought the department heads in to discuss how we saw the titles changing.

And that was an opportunity for them to communicate with us if they needed positions that didn't currently exist today.

They have some of our department heads have uh plans to do even small reorganizations, and those titles didn't exist on the salary ordinance today.

So it gave us a chance to then benchmark positions that we don't currently have, which happened mid-May through early June, is we is we did use data and benchmarked our current positions full-time civilian.

I want to make that clear.

The sworn happened before this process.

And then early June through late June, we uh put together our recommendations for what we wanted to see going forward from title changes, and uh later on we'll get into comp structure changes.

We had a meeting on July 21st with a few council members to give them a brief overview of our recommendations, and then on August 8th, we sent a letter to employees telling them what we wanted to happen and subject to council approval.

So that was the letter that was referenced that came out in in August.

Okay, so after we looked at the JQs and looked at all of the benchmark data, uh, this is our assessment of what we currently see today.

The good news is that Carmel pays competitive salaries.

We are able to attract the best team members, and I can say from personal experience, I worked for organizations that do not pay market rate, they pay in the basements compared to market, and it is really hard to attract and retain superior employees.

So we are already hitting the mark on that.

However, team members are maxed out really quickly.

So after five years, they max out on our current step in grade system, and we do not have a lot of flexibility or bandwidth to keep rewarding employees for performance after year five, except for longevity longevity pay increases and also any cola that we may decide to give.

So we have no way to reward performance other than promotion, and not that promotion isn't sometimes necessary, but it is it is rigid and it's the only method that we have.

So if somebody were to get a certification and we wanted to increase their salary, today we have no way of doing that.

So what happens then when there's it's a very rigid structure is there's systemic misuse of the job classification.

So what I imagine the original tent was with our grades, six through whatever, the jobs fall in those grades.

But if the only way to you know promote somebody or pay them more for a job well done is to move them out of that grade, which defeats the whole purpose of the grade system in the first place.

So because there was no set rules, uh maybe there were initially, but in in recent years there were no set rules around how you moved through the step system, is there was automatic increases from you know step one to three, four.

It's just sort of automatic.

So after year five, uh you maxed out, but you got essentially between the between the steps, about four percent annually plus the cola.

So in like a three percent call a year, that could be as much as seven percent increase without real structure performance evaluations built in, any of that is just automatic.

Um for new hires, there's really no way to negotiate a starting salary, and each new hire, um, especially for professional level positions, uh, sometimes negotiation needs to happen, and with the rigid system, and then there's only a 20% salary range, it is just hard to negotiate a starting salary.

Okay, so I thought it'd be a good idea to walk through maybe an example of what it our current system provides to employees.

Because they max out after five years, except for longevity and colas.

Um, I wanted to use show three employees all in grade 10 and look at what that looks like for three different types of employees.

So if employee A is somebody who's just hired, and they start in grade 10, step one.

Now we don't automatically start them in step one, sometimes there's a reason not to, but for this example, they're gonna start at step one.

Our current step in grade has that salary is almost 66,000.

Employee B has been in the same grade position for five years, but they are already at the end.

So grade 10, step six, they're at now 79,000.

So in five years without any real systems built into why they moved up that fast, they are now at 79 versus their starting wage of 66.

So they max out really fast, which is great.

Also, then there's nowhere to go after that.

So for employee C, they've been in a similar position for 15 years.

They're at grade 10, step six, but they're now at the same salary as somebody who's only been doing it five years.

And I would imagine somebody who's yes.

Yeah, is this a real example?

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, do we have employees exactly?

I would imagine we have this.

I can't.

What about like where are the colas for the 15 years?

So we're there the the colas are built into the steps as they occur.

So if if I'm somebody, let's say hypothetically, I'm employee A and I'm currently at 65,969.

As I progress into next calendar year, I would get the 4% increase for the step increase and the 3% increase as far as the cola.

And so for people that are in B and C, they started in, they started in step one, but basically every year got a 7% increase.

And so not only are the steps uh higher each year, but they the steps actually grow each year because as the cola goes up, the steps each go up by 3% each time.

Does that make sense?

So the salary in itself is the growth of the salary.

It's the change in the number per year with the Cola addition that increases the salary for everybody that's at the cap of the level.

So if you're if you're capped out, if you're already at step six, the only thing you would see year after year, and so let's let's say employee B and C.

What's going to be different for them after January 1st next year, they would both see a 3%, the same 3% increase from 25 to 26.

Okay.

We don't keep the numbers the same on the step in grade.

They change every year, but people that change happens for everybody in grade six.

Okay.

I'll look at the data set up.

Yeah, so everybody who's at the max grows by the cola amount, and that's the new max.

So there would be some salary differences as mentioned with longevity increases, which would be about a $3,000 difference in salary for employee B and C.

This the current step plan compresses salaries.

It doesn't give us a wide range of salaries to offer people.

They max they cap out fast and then they are stuck there.

You can you can change it.

Okay, so based on all of that information, here are our recommendations.

We would like to replace the step and grade system with a more modern salary structure.

Just to allow us more flexibility so that we can more readily address compensation related issues.

Um the example we've used throughout this process is if somebody takes on additional work, if somebody is out temporarily or there is a vacancy and that work needs to be distributed among the team.

Today we have no way of compensating them extra for extra work.

As I already mentioned to certifications, um education, any of those things that happen, we can't adjust to meet those improvements in our for our employees.

So we would like to widen our existing pay structures just so they don't max out fast.

There's more room to keep growing as long as they stay employed here.

We also have some updates to some job titles to better reflect the work that they're performing and also to match some of our employees, like the industry they are working in.

Some titles are really specific, and so we are recommending changes to a few of those titles.

We'd like to begin exploring options for new performance management tool.

We do not use one today.

It'd be a great way to recognize top performers and then also provide formal feedback to all employees.

And then we have very few rules, if any, um, around how this all works today, why people would move through the step system.

So we would recommend developing policies that support the new system, how you would move up, how you would, and then work closely with HR and finance so that we can continually use updated market data.

So our pay bands don't get outdated.

So we can have a more of a dialogue when we have a new hire and make sure we are appropriately paying our employees.

Okay, here's an here's the example of what our existing pay grades look like.

So if we look at grade 10, like the example uh we just used, the step one is 65, almost 66,000, and step six is 79.

And if we take that same grade and look at what our recommendations are, switch that.

We are suggesting we lower the minimum and increase the maximum.

Is it 10%, Christy?

Okay.

Um so anyway, so you can see our minimum is now 59, and our maximum is now 86.

So we are not suggesting that any of our current employees now move down or receive less money.

We are suggesting that in certain circumstances it may make sense to start a new hire closer to the minimum.

The goal to get most of our employees at midpoint.

Midpoint is where you are you know really well trained, you know your job really well, uh, you're you are working independently, you're high performer.

Most people, as as even if we have plotted our our um our salaries today, we would like to see that in more like a belt curve.

So we could then, if somebody is here, 10, 20, 40, we have 40 year employees, right?

We we can now offer them a bigger pay band.

You have a question?

Okay.

Okay.

I pulled up the salary spreadsheet with everybody's salaries that we got earlier this year.

Um and nobody has the same salary, and I know there's a cost of living increase that goes in as well.

So back to that slide where it's kind of an arbitrary calculation.

Is there an increase that goes in where when you hit that cap at five, six years?

You're still going to receive an increase based on your longevity that creates kind of the cost of not a cost of living, true, it's a smaller amount, but it does create some difference between a five year and a 15 year old.

And we have technical pay, we have different, we have different in our salary ordinance, there are different ways people would earn different wages.

But yes, to your point, it would be mostly from a longevity difference because that is based on your years of service.

Okay, so when they're at the cap, then they would get the three percent cost of living adjustment plus the six hundred dollar per year longevity pay payment.

Could you explain that longevity pay?

It's 250 a year for the first 10 years, 15, and then it jumps to three.

I'll let them get this right, but it's it starts at 250 per year, and then at a certain point, but it jumps to uh I think 310 per year.

Three two that year 11.

310 at year 11.

And then maxes out at year 20 or 25 25.

You want to finish uh your presentation on the last slide.

I'm waiting for Zach to get our I'm waiting for Zachar presentation going here.

There we go.

All right, so um just regarding the fiscal impact of the of the proposal.

Um again, there's there's some moving parts here, and so let me explain what's what's not in here.

This does not um the fiscal impact of the COLA for next year is not contemplated in the miss.

The fiscal impact of the next round of of step increases that will occur basically on January 1st is not contemplated in here.

And so uh I'm gonna actually skip the 25 fiscal impact first because that really depends upon uh if if and when council uh adopts this.

Uh so let's talk about the annualized fiscal impact for for 2026.

We have eight uh folks moving up uh at least one grade.

Uh those these costs have been built into the the budget requests for next year, but it's essentially 80 80,000 dollars is the fiscal impact of those folks that are are um moving up a grade, and that includes the base salary, uh FICA, Medicare Disability, and PERF.

Um, and essentially those numbers account for about 24, 25 percent, while the rest of that uh total is uh purely salary.

Looking beyond uh uh 2027, um it really depends upon how this is implemented um beyond that and what performance management looks like beyond that.

And so uh as we're recommending to do away with the the step system after we do this next round of step increases.

And so we've calculated that by basically saying today there are 30 percent.

So let me take that back.

Today there are 55% of our employees of our civilian employees are maxed out on the current step and grade system.

After this next round of step increases, we'll have 70% maxed out.

What we've done is basically said the the remaining 30%, that uh step increase not occurring in 2027, what would that be worth?

And that's $318,000.

That would be a cost avoidance.

Uh, but I can't say for sure at this point in time uh would would we necessarily save that much or spend more than that?

It really depends upon um how we implement uh a performance management system or performance valuations, as well as what other type of uh things we do in terms of as as Nicole was mentioning, um you've taken on additional work or got an additional certification, now we can reward you for those for that in in ways that we can't currently.

Our next slide is simply just a questions slide.

So I just had a wanted to make a statement and then a question.

So Carmel Clay Parks face um a lot of pressure from our fiscal bodies from the township and the council at the time when I was president to of meeting 100% cost recovery in our uh Monon Community Center and many of our funds, and then maintaining a very high cost recovery for our department of as a whole, which but those um areas of Carmel Clay Parks are literally operate as a business.

Now they um did have to make a number of changes related to automatic step increases and the longevity pay at that time, I believe it was in 2016.

So when you guys were looking at um these issues, um, did you have conversations with Michael Clitzing and his department about things that strategies they use to work with the staff and to gain buy-in and to look at how to address these type of changes?

I have worked with and reached out for information regarding their performance evaluation um process and have plans to meet with uh one of their employees who leads that process to I think it's going really well for them.

So in that way, that is how I uh worked with Park.

But I don't know, Zach, did you talk to him at all about the budget piece?

Uh only from the standpoint of whenever we as we were talking about the some of these results and and seeing kind of the uh restrictions that the uh current step and grade uh system imposes, uh Michael mentioned that yeah, that they they moved away from automatic step and grade uh years ago.

Um then the last question I'll as chair I'll stop asking questions.

But um in MVH right now, though, um though it's decreased from 600,000 to 2026 of 350,000, you still show available overtime um for the street department.

Is it the position that we're just going to budget it but not allow it?

Our position is basically let's do what we can to minimize the amount of overtime, and so that if people uh work overtime and there's opportunities to to flex time to use that as comp time and and uh uh then that would be the first option.

There are times when that's uh not possible at all, um, but we're doing a number of things to minimize our overtime spending.

Questions from the committee?

Ryan?

Sure.

Counselor Locke, I should say.

Yep.

So um to start, I would love to just kind of go back to the beginning, like of all of this.

You kind of went through how we got here, what it was.

I have a lot of questions about just the shape of um hiring NFP for $80,000, getting through the first kind of process of doing the matrix and then deciding not to do that anymore.

Um and then moving to another system where we changed the behavior of the salary study, took out that third party kind of that does this professionally, and I don't say you guys don't do this professionally.

I fully respect HR and what you guys do, and it's one of the hardest things there is.

But the concept here that we shifted for something that we went all in on for our sworn and got to an end result that the city and those officers and firefighters agreed on is questionable to me.

And then I do I want to preface that with the concept here that the last slide here on the financial impact says that all of this in theory, if we're looking at it from a financial perspective, is to save $318,000 in 2027.

All of this work, all of this consternation, all of the rewrite of people's salaries and making them go through this process ends with a financial impact two years from now.

Um that in theory we can figure out a way to save that from other things to make sure that this continues.

And I I say that I just want to go back to the beginning of why are we here?

Why do we have this massive dramatic change without a third party help validating it?

Um why are we trying to vote on this going into this budget cycle?

Yeah, I I I think I can uh address most of those.

So first of all, with with regards to that contractor's work on Sworn.

They did provide some value, but I'll say their data was stale.

We still had to go out separate from them and get more real-time data as they were looking at police and fire contracts that were um already two years old and not considering um because they didn't have access to to kind of uh more real-time information.

When it came to um ultimately moving away from that contractor, uh and and Nicole mentioned kind of the garbage in, garbage out concern.

Um I I think this is a really good example, at least one that makes sense for me.

But um Paige that works at HR that that does payroll.

Does anybody know whether she her title is payroll analyst or payroll manager?

I I don't care if Paige likes her title.

I guess is the question here.

My point is that whenever it it matters from the standpoint of when we go out to compare it to market, that there's an implied difference between an analyst and a manager.

So yeah, so that I think that gets to the heart of the initial the concept of comparing this to market.

Um and I want to reiterate to staff and specifically gentlemen who spoke earlier, this is Carmel.

Um it is awesome.

It is the number one or number two city in the history of mankind uh year after year uh because of the labor, the effort, and the people that are here.

Um I I do struggle um with the concept of looking at market to compare um specifically with all the other externalities that we've seen.

Um and I want to get into those too as we talk about like what the intent of the data set was.

Um but I want to circle back to the concept that from what you've presented tonight, um the only financial externality is that we have stopped a bump in grade for potentially 30% of people that may stay in the 2027, may not now, because we're changing the way that they're being compensated.

But I would shift.

I can clarify that this was not undertaken as a budgetary savings or increase maneuver.

Okay, so what was the intent?

I guess is my getting back to that question.

The mayor's commitment was to make sure that our uh our team is compensated uh appropriately.

What what is what does that mean?

Um I think appropriately is is open to interpretation, but we recognize that uh we we pay carnal caliber wages because we have carmal caliber employees.

Um but it had been a long time since we ever really compared uh most salaries to to anything, and again, it it was a highly bastardized compensation structure, just um whichever director was the most um convincing got their person moved at at times um you know six grades up without any rationale, without any policy behind it.

Um we had a broken system that had not been um really true up in the well I I want to Can I add something real quick?

Can you go back to the the pay band our recommendation?

No, that's the pay bans, yeah.

So these are the pay bans that we're recommending.

But at this point, I'm not recommending what our strategy should be.

So I view it as sort of layered.

Like this is based on market data and our current rates.

They're not very that much from where we currently are.

Um because we are Carmel and we do want to pay well.

The intent was not to figure out a way to pay people less.

In fact, our plan allows us to pay people more the longer they're here.

I think we should reward longevity in that way.

But how we apply this as yet to be determined.

I have worked for organizations where the goal was to get everybody to midpoint, and then they kind of hang out there.

That might not be our strategy.

Maybe we want to get everything maximum.

The strategy behind this, I don't feel like has really been decided.

This is just our ranges to actually allow more flexibility to pay people appropriately, which could mean better.

Yeah, for sure.

And I I guess that is my issue with the whole process is that there is not a strategy.

There is no reason for doing this other than it was a promise to do it.

But like when I look at data, and I've not seen the data on the back end.

Um, but the concept here of this not being a sustainable model, um I could see there being high efficacy in the concept of you start a career and you get to your max salary within those bumps in year five or six, that's when you're probably the expert.

You hit kind of that knowledge base, you grow from there from that.

But if you're if your job is something you want to stay in into perpetuity um and you are happy with that, and the pay is enough to sustain that and it's something worthwhile, you stay in that role.

So I I would love to see what our life cycle for employees is.

Is it higher than it is for places like the state that has a different pay structure that doesn't incentivize people in a way that makes them want to stay, unless you can fight for it?

Um the the idea that we're taking an outside structure, creating a new thing without a strategy of how we implement it to take care of our staff and our staffing needs as a city seems to be missing the point of doing a salary study.

At the state, the reason we did it a couple years ago was that everybody was so underpaid.

Um it was time in a uh glorious glut of extra money in whatever year that was 2021, 22.

Zach, you probably remember better than me because you had to do the whole thing, um, where we said let's compensate people so we don't lose them.

Uh the flip here is when we're taking on a model of a different structure without a rationale for why we're doing it, or without the strategy of how we're going to implement it, we're just creating change for the sake of again empirically saving 318,000 in two years.

So I I guess that's my struggle.

I would love to know what that strategy is.

What is the data that shows that this will be better for our employees, better for the run of keeping people in a position where they feel like they're fulfilling their obligation to their city, the place that they work, even if they don't live here, they're caramel, um, in a way that they are compensated to stay.

I would love to know if if we're better off than other places.

I would love to know if if that's the thing.

If we're looking at market data, the pay band itself is not the market.

I don't want to compete with Fisher's for street department.

I want our street department to be taken care of in a way that our street department is our street department, and Fisher's needs to catch up to us if they want our people, um, not the other way around.

Um so when I when I look at this whole thing, like I just I and I don't think this is uh a fault of hey, you were given a task and you had to build it.

I think we're missing the reason.

And that's been my issue the whole time.

Um again, back to my questions.

Um the idea of how we determine this.

Um again, I think it uh it is telling, and maybe we weren't getting the service we needed from the contractor, but that we pivoted away from a contractor and went to hiring an internal staff member to then make these determinations in the image not of a third-party validator, but of what we needed to do for whatever reason that we don't know because we haven't figured out how we're gonna implement it.

Um seems moderately arbitrary.

Counselor, I would I would argue that we were going to we were going to pay a lot for a work product um that was not going to be useful.

I whenever I when I approached the vendor and said I was afraid of this garbage in, garbage out.

We're going to need to do a deep dive on what folks actually do.

And that was our decision on our garbage.

We didn't send our garbage and they said it was garbage.

We we decided it was garbage before we had them look at it.

Okay.

They essentially said, and I said we're gonna need to get in the weeds, and that might also include job shadowing.

They said we cannot help you with this project.

So they remove themselves from it.

Okay.

I mean, I get I guess I could go through these.

I need to be convinced somehow.

That this is a thing that is necessary now.

It and it could be financial.

It could be that if we do not do this, we will not survive as a city.

Or we will need to make cuts elsewhere, or we will need to get rid of people.

I need some type of convincing to say that this is something worthwhile doing the way that it was done, the way with the input.

The feedback I've gotten shows that there is just a general lack of understanding of what this means and how it's going to impact people's lives, which I fully agree.

I don't know that I have any more information tonight about that, maybe less, knowing that we don't know how we're going to implement this moving forward.

I do know to your point of the old system the one vote that I regret the most on this council was the vote to change the top pay band, which increased the salaries of all of the top leaders by a huge margin in the face of everything we're entering into now.

It feels like a big slap in the face to all mid-level or lesser bureaucrats that we have found a way to find a path through that.

And here we are talking about cutting street departments overtime when they have to plow the streets if it snows.

I know from the data set we heard, there's a there was one pay period last year that was 186,000 in overturn that was necessary to clear the streets of the city.

If we didn't do that, we wouldn't be caramel.

So those those things are important.

So I say all that.

Yep, I'll go next.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Long.

So I guess I'm gonna start out, and I may have to get Jim up here to help me a little bit.

But um I have been doing this for a while, and I've never seen a room full of employees show demonstrating concern to city council.

So immediately the hair on the back of my neck is up, and I'm worried.

Never seen this before.

So I'm also confused because when I went through this salary study, as an example, um every category is going up.

So you know, I'm just picking something.

Crew leader.

I'm not sure I know what a crew leader uh if there's a certain department, but a crew leader is going from a salary of $2,119 up to 3,074.

That appears to me to be a good thing.

Okay.

So I'm confused.

Um so I need Jim to help me out, uh, or anybody who wants to speak.

But so I really want to ask the room, what are our big concerns?

What is it that I need to know that I might not know?

Um now over time that's easy.

I get that.

I've already seen that in the budget.

But of the salary study that is before us right now.

This is a range, and someone is gonna decide whether I'm at the bottom of the range or the top of the range.

Maybe we need to talk a little bit about that.

But is the person that was on the step and grade who's been here 15 years, are they getting um I know I can't use the word I want to use, but are they getting cheated or uh yeah, cheated?

No, so uh again just to clarify no employee uh will have a can't sorry.

Let me hear Zach, please.

Yeah, no, no employee's salary will be reduced or or anything like that as as a result of this.

Um if anything, employees that are capped at the max today, uh, which again on January 1st, 70% of our employees will be capped at the max, where they can only grow through a COLA COLA increase.

This provides them with an additional uh 10 to 30 percent of runway beyond what the current cap is.

I I also just want to clarify while I because I forgot to respond to this earlier.

Um there's there's no part of the and I'm not saying it's it's it's uh it's uh unrelated or or not uh uh a valid concern, but there's no part of this that touches overtime.

Um yeah, and that that that one, yeah, we got to work on that one.

But okay.

So would anyone from the audience want to help me understand or to counselor's point?

I mean, that's exactly what I'm trying to understand.

If the if the bands are widening and the maximums are increasing, which allows people to earn more money in their position.

Is there a case where is is that is it just a miscommunication and then and employees don't understand that, or is it are there titles changing that change them from a title that was in a higher band to now a lower band?

Or I'm trying to understand there were besides the overtime thing, just like Jess said, I'm I'm befuddled by the same there there were two positions overall that were moved down one grade.

Um those are the only two.

Um one was in my department, and that was somebody who is still classified as a director that should not no longer be classified as director.

Um and I'm I'm not sure what the other one was, but those were the only two that went down a grade, but their salaries were not impacted uh by that.

There their salaries are still within that lower grade.

And from my experience of 20 years in the corporate world where we redid, we re-evaluated job descriptions like every three or four years.

Um they did salary studies.

Um we had, you know, sometimes we got um extra increases at the end of the year because they added a salary study based on our performance, and only we got we're performance increase, and we got that.

But if there's this much confusion, it seems like it comes down to communication.

So besides those two, I'd like to hear from staff to about is there any concerns related to this this step and grade model and the expanding of the bands.

And if if if there's confusion or concern or something we're not getting.

Yep, so Morgan Reinhardt, I'm from our IT department.

And I might speak from kind of the the odd place when we talk about IT because it is technology, those are traditional higher paying jobs.

But one of the challenges we have is we are just not attracting talent at kind of a proposed minimum for each grade, right?

So I definitely appreciate their widening of the range as we go into the maximums.

But for us to attract talent from the corporate side or from off the street, we're starting them at potentially some of the tops of these grades already.

Uh so you have might have an employee that's been here for 15 years, they've been capped out, and now they have a little room to work.

But to drag kind of the best of what we've been looking for in caramel, we're already starting them way up high in these grades.

And so I can only speak from a technology perspective, but that's one of the challenges we face as we try and get kind of the best employees possible to fill our role here in Caramel.

So Morie would so would you then say that well, so so are we sticking with the grade system?

Yes, and just quick note we didn't meet with Kevin today.

What is his exact title?

I always forget Kevin's title.

Technology's director of what is called director, I think.

And we did talk about how it is a common practice to carve out certain positions like IT, because they to his exact point, they don't make sense in a system like this, and we have to pay top dollar to attract people in that in that industry.

So we are talking about things like that.

Okay.

All right.

I certainly appreciate the widening of the range.

I think that does do something for the employees that have been here for some time.

But you know, I I kind of go back to what we talked about with our sworn or police on fire.

We definitely made that commitment to them that we want the best that you know is out there to fill those roles.

And I think we probably need to look at that the same way as we go across the civilian market.

Counselor Locke?

Yeah, I just wanted to make a point on that too.

The financial externality of doing this and changing this process where you look at those bumps, is that now financial constraints of city budgeting will attribute whether or not there are raises being allocated to people.

So like we already have that a little with COLA.

But the concept now, if you get a rifle from the grade bump, then is you can get mandated by potentially leadership in a more centralized way that creates that externality where some get and some don't.

Um that creates a system where Street Department is the example because there are nine here may get allocated uh two raises total, and that's all that they get to do, even if they had nine people with exceptional process.

This is something the state went through a little under a decade ago as they were looking at performance-based compensation.

They moved away from it because it was a horrendous builder of bad blood between employees and their bosses.

Um I personally had an experience where a boss came in and um cried because she was not allowed to give um people all exceptional raises and had to pick between her children, her employees, um, how that was being allocated.

So I do think the the one externality of this, well on its face, the idea of broadening the range matters if you get away from the step and grade process, you're eliminating that bump up that becomes automatic for the incentivizing of really the hardest years to maintain an employee, which are those first years of employment.

When you create something that changes that behavior, or you put it in a position where it becomes kind of a a manager toolkit, um, you get into a system where if it is a top-down approach or it's a bell curve approach, um, you're eliminating the ability of a large organization to create that equity in pay that should be there.

That's pretty esoteric and deep in the process.

But this eliminates in theory that thing that has been sustainable for the growth of our team, um, which is that jump to that level that makes sense.

Um, and then that I think the the piece of it that's missing in all of this is that the decoupling of the raise or a conversation about a raise from the matrix changes that we did for the Sworn has put the rest of our staff in a position where they don't feel like anybody is advocating for them.

Um so I think that for me is one of the externalities that's rough here.

Like next year we'll say, Oh, there's not enough money to do a raise.

But we can do two million in raises and we're gonna spread that out, but now it's merit-based, so we'll all feel good about that because we changed something into a merit-based structure.

Um, but that will be allocated in a specific way by a centralized idea set that changes the narrative and the tenor of this relationship between the city, its finance department, and its and its staff moving forward.

So that that's the externality that I see that's a bummer, even though it does broaden the range, the likelihood that anybody is gonna bump up to that is lessened based on the concept that now we're applying it individually.

And it's you know, you it's great that you have that perspective from you know being in government as somebody who's been in private industry for 19 years.

I've never seen a step and grade system at all in my entire life until I started working with um Carmel Clake Parks in 2010.

And you know, in the private sector, your raise is directly based on profitability, available funds, and your performance.

So it's how do we get to a place where we're rewarding top performers, attracting the top talent.

Um those are you know those are difficult conversations right now, particularly with what we're dealing with with reduction of revenue.

Yes.

Karen Sutton Karma Please again.

Um I'm gonna kind of try to hit some of those that talked about.

Um, but I I feel it's important to also tell you that I'm terrified to speak up because of my position.

Um, because I am not protected because of what I say, I I get in trouble.

Um but a couple things.

That being said, um, the communication on it, obviously we have all had um specifically, and mine are very specific to my agency.

Um we uh as the civilian employees were pulled into a meeting, um, said we have a meeting at three o'clock, whatever, um, told, do you have any questions about this?

I have your your letters here in my hand.

Do you have any questions?

And we also we we don't even know what questions to ask.

We don't have our letters, we had to line up alphabetical, we were given our letters as we walked out.

Um so the communication was was difficult to um understand kind of what was happening elsewhere for um us, like my midpoint right now, according to the band structure, um, is less than what I I make right now.

Granted, I'm um at the the top um range of mine.

So I I that's been so many questions for me.

Do I freeze?

I'm 20 years, so I'm where you think I should be as my midpoint.

But the four of us, the four CSIs, were also trained to a higher level than any of our peers in the county.

So I'm at the midpoint, but now do I freeze there because I have been here so long?

Um, or how do you incentivize me or us as uh CSIs if I if I have two murders, do I get a bonus?

Is that I mean what how do you incentivize me?

Um how do I how do I meet a criteria for a lot of people that don't even understand what it is I do or that we do?

Um I am actually losing all four of us, and I I'm speaking for my partners, but I am losing money.

My compensation package has been brought down.

I'm losing my take home car, so I am now losing seven thousand dollars a year.

So I am losing money now.

Um and how do I ever get to this maximum if if I'm where the city believes me to be.

We have not told any employees that they are losing their their vehicles yet.

We are to be fair, that is true.

We we are putting geotab devices on vehicles to understand utilization and we'll make uh decisions based upon that.

I just can I just say something?

Yeah.

I'm sorry that that was your experience receiving the letters.

I think there was a lot of miscommunication around the letters, and there were some big lessons learned, and so I want to apologize if that is how any employee felt.

We did not provide a lot of direction to directors or supervisors who were handing out the letters.

So I'm I'm assuming they wanted to be efficient.

I can understand why that probably felt scary, especially in light of this budget situation.

So I apologize for any miscommunication that my department or myself may have caused in that piece, but that was never the intention to scare people with these letters.

In fact, we are hoping to just get some information out so that there was an awareness before the council meeting where we brought this to the council so that people weren't learning about it, watching YouTube or whatever.

So I do think there were some big lessons learned on communicating with departments, so my apologies for that.

That's fine.

And I I think it's important.

Um my chief didn't know either, so no blame on him either.

He was in the same boat that we all were, we don't know what's going, so I think it's important to say that.

Can I just what was in the letter?

What what's the letter?

Um, I can tell you my letter said um you are your title listing, or I'm changing from a forensic specialist to a crime scene investigator, um, which is what we've been known as forever, and there is no um pay raise.

But a lot of ours didn't uh make any sense.

My partner uh Mark said his was staying the same as crime scene investigator.

Um so there's just been all different things that they said, but most of them said you're staying here, there's no difference in your compensation.

Okay.

If I can clarify, I think there were probably uh five different types of letters um in it addressed basically whether your title was changing or not, whether your grade was changing or not, and whether your pay was changing or not, and those combinations uh employees would have received one of five different types of letters letting them know kind of uh the the results of the the the JAQ and market study on their position.

Counselor Snyder.

Hey, thank you.

I'm uh I ran away from my daughter's soccer practice, so I've got to say my piece and then get back to it because I but I I do want to say uh whether it was unintentional or not, the staff wouldn't be talking about losing their cars if you hadn't said they were losing their cars, and I don't know so to say I I don't think that's accurate that you never said they were losing their cars because they were told that, and that whether it was supposed to be that way or not, that's what happened.

So they have been told they're losing their vehicles.

Um I want to comment on some of the consternation or externalities or what why the staff may be upset for for many years.

The staff was tied to the fire department.

And whatever the fire department got, the staff got.

And whether that's right or wrong, that became the expectation over most people's entire careers.

So the minute that doesn't happen.

I would have alarm bells ringing if I was in staff, like, oh, we're gonna do something different, but I assume I'll still be taken care of.

But they haven't.

And I hate the fact that we even talk about a three percent cola and use the word raise in the same sentence because nobody that works with City of Carmel is dumb.

They realize that that is not a raise, that is an adjustment.

Um but I I think a consternation also goes back to somehow we have separated the importance of departments to a degree.

And where department heads, at least in my eyes, and I would assume in many of the staff's eyes, we're all on an equal playing field.

Now there's you, Sam, uh Nick.

I arguably say Kelly, maybe not.

Um in this like upper tier, like this new tier of directors, super directors, this new layer of bureaucracy.

And the cost to the city, so yours is 299,000.

Or excuse me, yours is 280 something.

Nick's is 299,000.

Sam's is 270 something plus another 30 grand from the deferral program.

Um's is important because she's at three, she costs the city 300 grand, but John Oberlander made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

So, oh no, no, my turn.

Um a lot of these are new, like they're new things.

You may have replaced somebody, but they're new, and all in, there is new money of over a million dollars.

And if I'm a member of the staff and I'm looking at my department, I'm seeing a million dollars of this new money.

I'm thinking, why was why did that money not, if they had that money, why didn't it get distributed amongst the staff?

And I think that it that is a that's a concern I would have.

I mean, that there is there's so much new money.

There's a whole marketing department that doesn't help any of these people.

That's new money.

So partly it, I I would be sitting there thinking, why did we go do all these experiments before we were taken care of first?

And that's that's one that's what I'm frustrated about because we seem to be taking care of the new instead of the existing, and we're doing that, it's becoming a prevailing theory throughout the city, in my opinion.

Um we talk about how altruistic it is that the mayor's staff isn't taking this three percent cola raise, and and I've heard comments that the council still is.

Well, we actually haven't gotten a budget, so whether we are or we aren't is irrelevant.

But if we do, it's six thousand dollars.

For you guys, that would be for all the entire council, the entire council.

For the new money, this new million plus dollars, which also includes on top of that is also the fire chief and the police chief.

And you made a comment, I was listening to this meeting trying to get here about it.

Used to be, well, it's whoever's department director you know screamed the loudest.

Well, yes.

And if they don't scream loud enough for their staff, then the staff should be going to HR, and that person should get fired because they should be advocating.

They know their employees better than anybody in the C suite, and and that's where we've just gotten away from that human touch.

And I know that it continues to grow, but I have I have been in huge companies, I've been in small companies, and the ones that are successful take care of their employees on all levels, and maybe the CEO doesn't know every employee, and that's okay, but the directors all do, and there is no advocacy anymore, especially with these bands.

So, and I'm sorry to cut you off, but I I do need to get back to my daughter's soccer practice.

But I'm I'm frustrated about this, and I I don't want to take away from the work you've done, but it I just want the employees taken care of first before everybody else, because y'all did get taken care of.

Everybody in the C suite's making well over 200,000 a year, and that never used to be a thing ever.

So I appreciate you, Zach.

I didn't mean to come across as an ass, but I I'm gonna take care of these people before I ever take care of.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman, for letting me come.

And if I can the only thing I was gonna clarify there, counselor, is um when you are speaking about Sam's, that that deferral piece isn't an addition, it's just represents how her comp where it comes from.

She's most of her compensation comes from the general fund, a portion of it comes from the deferral fund.

Okay, counselor Austin.

Thank you.

Uh want to echo a lot of what Councillor Schneider said along those lines.

Um action, I I know I can't make motions as a not a member of this committee, but I would recommend when you look at the salary ordinance.

We have two positions that the mayor has uh said that she will not backfill, but she's asked us to keep it in the ordinance, and these are two of those 200,000 plus positions that he alluded to.

Chief infrastructure officer and economic development director.

Um I would recommend you strike that from the ordinance.

Um she says that one day she would like to add these positions, great, it's very quick and easy to add them again.

You know, we did this before, so um it doesn't preclude her from asking for that in the future, but if you leave it in there, we have no say, we cannot prevent the mayor from hiring these positions if somehow money is found or in whatever way.

So uh I would say that those positions should be eliminated from there.

Um and uh along the lines you talk about the communication, the letters being an issue.

So you usually were having uh you know annual or semi-annual all employee meetings, you know, that's something I kind of arrange at my day job, um, but you canceled them recently.

Why was that we changed them from all employee to department level?

So we still met with all employees.

We just wanted to create a smaller venue so that employees could ask questions, feel more comfortable instead of everybody in one big room.

We just met them at the department level.

I would argue there's some value to those because I think you know you don't want everyone to be in silos from one department to another, and and having people regardless of which department they're all all meeting to talk about issues that are going on from the city, I think does have some value.

So I would encourage you to consider that in the future.

Yeah, I don't disagree.

In fact, we we got a lot of feedback after the all employee meetings from the fall.

Um employees didn't love them, so we just you know, trial and error tried something different, but really we did want to encourage more dialogue at these.

But we will there is an intent to do that.

I mean, that's the one thing you're always trying to do is to make sure that you're talking with people and not at them, and that's the hardest part of those meetings, and I understand that.

But it feels like if employees um felt strongly about this, this may have been a great way to you know uh talk about it and uh and get some of the information out there.

Mr.

Chairman, can I six um kind of suggest something here?

So to counselor Locke's um kind of point earlier, like what was the the point in in doing this in the first place?

And and it it started off with a um are our employees, our team adequately compensated.

In order to answer that question, we felt like we first needed to make sure that the titles were accurate in order to do some sort of meaningful comparison.

Once we did that step, the next step uh resulted in us realizing kind of hey, there are some shortfalls with our with the step system.

I and and I understand that there are some um whether it's communication or uh to to Counselor Locke's uh uh point earlier, like what what's the next step in this?

Kind of what what's what's the plan, how does it get implemented?

I I would go back and say, you know, again, there it's it's now kind of there's there's two chunks of this.

One is should we title our people more appropriately?

And the other part is should we do away with the the step and grade system?

It it sounds like council is not ready to sign off on that doing away of the step and grade, and we've got some work to do there.

Um with that said though, I do think that we've done a very good job of getting titles right.

And and even since we first brought this to council last month, that's the reason why there is a revised version because we have continued to meet with with employees, and again I knew the cadence was going to be odd whenever I first uh started putting this together to bring forward because it was a question do we tell employees first what we think the right answer is for them, or do we tell council first what we think the right answer is?

And there were ongoing discussions with employees and department heads.

I don't I don't I'm not sure that we I'm not sure that there was a an easy path there in terms of I mean it's just the the difficulties of kind of overhauling uh a local government system that the the sandbox in which the general assembly makes us play is that council sets salaries for for every uh position and in order to kind of have that uh discussion about is is this the right salary title, it it unfortunately kind of has to be a public discussion.

Where my ramble is going is um again, I I I think um if if council uh wants to pause the um changes to the uh the step and grade system, totally get that.

Let's let's keep talking.

My hope though is that there's um uh I I'd love to convince you uh that we've done a good job on making sure that titles are now the most reflective and have improved again um of the 160 titles that changed, I think over half of them were at the um uh utility department, where the biggest change there was we took out the word sewer out of people's titles and replaced it with with wastewater.

Um I I'd like to try to find a path forward on updating titles, even if we can't move forward on on uh um thank you for that ass.

I did we did have um someone else who would like to speak, so I'd like to have you come back up and articulate um some of your concerns and what we asked for.

Thank you very much.

Uh Adam Schreiner Engineering, um, I'm the right-of-way inspector.

Um I'm in my 25th year working for the city.

I do not live here.

I have more passion than some of the people that work and live here for this city.

Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.

You have to keep the people here that are working here and want to work here.

Otherwise, you're gonna lose all your intellect and all the shortcuts that we've learned throughout the years.

My fear personally in this study is we've always had the ability for the director to give you a raise if he deemed it necessary, or deemed it uh you deserve it.

Um in 25 years, I have never seen that done.

I've seen one person that got a technological 10% increase because he's doing something outside of his job description.

There's a lot of work that gets passed around to other people to pick up where the shortfalls are, and it's not right to them, and it's not right to the other people that are doing the work to have to pick up the slack because we don't maybe have the necessary manpower to achieve that and keep our infrastructure below ground in good shape.

We see all the paving and all the curves and stuff getting done right now, which is great for the visibility um value, but everything underground needs to be taken care of and be maintained.

Um back to the salary study.

I was fearing, because the original, like I said, the director was able to, if they had money in their budget left over, they were able to distribute that to whoever was worthy of it.

Never seen it.

That's what I'm fearing of this.

I'm now in the middle of it.

Not that being capped out was a great thing, but I would be probably in the 75 percentile for grade 11.

Um, but I just wanted to put it out that it's just it's just a bigger carrot.

I've never seen it done, and it's I guess consider me being jaded.

Um I don't want to go anywhere.

Um so I have a question.

So but if there is the um automatic step and cola, though, you would start approaching the higher end, you would have capacity to for upward mobility, wouldn't you?

Or am I misunderstanding that?

I I didn't elaborate that right.

So I came over from Fisher's as a building inspector.

I came in as a grade 11 step two.

So I started at two and went to six.

So I was capped out, I've been capped out for 21 years.

Um a lot of years that we never got a cola, but we got some of our you know insurance money back towards the end of the year, which is awesome.

When you have other departments getting raises, and we don't, it just hurts because we're the gears.

If you don't have the gears, it's gonna fall apart.

So do you feel with the new system with the higher maximum range, your salary wouldn't wouldn't you want your salary to be able to grow then?

Or are you it is that what your what is your concern with having the increased maximum?

I think it's a facade.

I really don't think that there we have a fixed income with our budget.

We don't make money, so there's no there's no way to judge if somebody's doing a great job at you know changing that tire.

There has to be parameters for that to have efficacy and clout to actually say that you you know it just doesn't seem like that would work unless you've got clear parameters of how you can achieve that.

We've never had a clear objective to achieve that.

Objectives are going to be the key to that, I believe.

Thank you.

And I I just wanted to thank everybody for uh uh giving us the time to at least express ourselves, especially for us that don't live here.

We really don't feel like we've got a voice, and we appreciate that.

Ryan?

Counselor Locke.

I just trying to think of like how this could have gone.

Um what conversations could have had and should have maybe been had and how like we could go through that, like the from a council perspective, we're part-time microphone people.

Like we we can weigh in, we can get feedback, we can kind of shape an understanding.

We don't have any authority other than over the approval of these things, um, which to your point, Zach, like the reason the legislator set it up this way is so that we could mitigate executive branch action to set those salaries arbitrarily.

Like that's that the reason it exists this way is to stop that behavior.

Um so I I do just have like a issue with opening that to become the process on its face.

But I again back to like how could this have gone?

Could the could there have been more conversations?

Could we have built this in a way where the staff was excited?

Like it would be a wonderful world to be standing here or sitting here, and the feedback we're getting on the mic is like this would be great, this is exciting.

I think it will allow us to hire smart people to come in and help us do these things, or it takes care of somebody that's been here for 35 years in a way that they now get to be compensated a little more.

We know that we're moving in a direction where it's a positive thing, but without putting together that strategy, that structure, having those conversations with even the director level under what Matt's new term, the high bureaucracy, whatever he called it, like we're we're missing the understanding, and it's it's almost impossible for us to get it done.

Um and that being said, like looking at kind of the time of resident, we didn't have to fill out a J AQ.

Um we can empathize more sympathize like with what that felt like but if you don't know why it's coming or what it's for or how it's coming, you're gonna have fear about it no matter what, and it just feels like we missed that whole thing.

So, like what I would love is like to have any concept on for me voting yes on this in any form other than kind of where it stands until we have better conversations about it, it's we need to figure out what the impact is.

We need people to say that yeah, this makes sense, we're moving in the right direction, that all this work, all this effort and energy to bring in people and to pay a contractor and then not pay a contractor, and then to fill that with extra labor hours, and we we've spent $318,000 this year on the HR process of doing this from the number of hours it took to line up and take letters for everybody to save it in two years.

So, like, I I just think like is there a way we can have more conversation?

Not with the legislative level, leave us out of it or don't.

Um, but like within your departments, the city staff to figure out kind of where we're going, what it looks like, why we're doing this, to kind of come up with a plan that makes sense for us to be able to vote on something.

To to counselor Locke's point, um to see the number of staff here, I'm and somebody who's actually filled out, who's been through this process multiple times in the corporate world, and you know, is always communicated really well, and it was actually for us as the employees, it always felt like an opportunity to be compensated more, particularly in banking.

If you're in a title, you max out very quickly, and you cannot get any more pay besides bonus unless you go to a different job description, which would be a maybe a different grade, right?

And the stepping grade system.

So I'm just so confused that we're trying to increase the maximum amount that employees can be paid, but for some reason, because of this process, there is so much confusion and fear around it that we're we can feel the tension and the concern from the staff.

So there was something very, very faulty in the way that this was communicated and and let out to departments.

You know, when we would go through this as a staff, we would have all the managers, we'd come in, HR would come in and meet with the management team, then they would come to my individual office and we would meet with my staff and talk about it.

And it was always usually exciting when we were going through a this type of process, because we always knew generally that meant because we knew where the market was going.

We always and we knew the cost of living was increasing.

We generally knew that that meant more compensation for us.

So I'm just completely I understand getting job descriptive, you know, job names accurate and so forth, but I think somehow the way this was all done at the same time, it's created, and then probably the disparity of how the change of compensating public safety versus staff has created so much clouded this process that um people are not happy and it's gotta be fixed.

Yeah, I agree.

Um I do think that is the biggest lesson learned throughout this whole thing is how to better communicate with employees.

So I took for granted uh at the director level that there were different ways that they were going to communicate this out to the director, and I should have taken more ownership over communicating to employees, maybe going to those department meetings and talking about it.

When we announced it at the all-employee meeting that may not have been the best like venue since there was a lot happening, and it's easy to miss one part of the entire thing.

So I also think the timing was really bad.

It it came at the same time with all of the budget stuff, and it caused a a lot of confusion and question, like now the intent was questioned when I did start out with good intent, and I think the results are better for employees.

So I think it was it was a it was just a perfect storm of timing and then me being new and not communicating in the best fashion.

I think it's completely unfair that somebody's worked here for 25 years has been capped at the same salary for 15 years.

That's to me ridiculous.

Um I you know, I I was when I first heard this at the face value, I was excited that the maximum ban was going to be expanded.

And that, hey, I know that there's people who have been here for a long time that have been stuck at the same salary forever.

Council Royal.

Okay, thank you.

So um Nicole, it's okay if I call you Nicole, okay.

Um when we talk about the director level, I'm assuming that you there's um there are director meetings, but those directors they report to someone higher than them, right?

How so how can we have this much confusion if there's a manager above the director who then I'm assuming is on your level, is that correct?

Or are you a director?

You're a director, okay.

So can you kind of go through that process?

How did we get so far off track with all this management we have now?

Yeah.

Um I would like to understand that.

Yeah, so we kept directors in the loop, either meeting one-on-one to talk about their specific departments in relation to the actual salary study, and then just updating at regular department meetings where we were at just the process, all of that.

When it came to the end, and we were talking about how we were going to communicate with employees, I think that is when it got messy.

And because we didn't, to Zach's point, we didn't know what to do first.

We didn't know if we should communicate with employees first or communicate with the council first.

That was that was tricky.

So the letters were felt a little rushed, and in that way, I think the communication to the directors who are going to be the ones talking to employees about the letters.

At the same time, we're talking now about budget cuts, it all just felt scary instead of exciting.

We did have a few conversations with employees who were excited about it, and they were excited to tell us what they did.

We had we had a few shining moments with employees, and they got a chance to really I hate to say plead their case because we're not trying to take anything away, but they got a chance to really explain what they did, and there's so much pride in their jobs that that was wonderful for me to as a new employee to hear.

So I think it was at that very last moment at the director leadership level where that the letter was like the missing link, and it just caused unnecessary confusion.

Okay.

All right.

So then along with that confusion, um, and you gotta correct me now if I if I do this wrong, but I'm just looking at a grade 11 all or existing pay.

Um so someone comes in, they start at 70 grand, and then fairly quickly, no, I'm I'm hearing like five years, they are at 82.

Well, it and actually I I would say so if you you said grade 11, right, counselor?

Grade 11.

I just using that was as an example.

So let's say somebody did come in this year as a grade 11.

On January 1, that person would actually go to a salary that's not on here today.

They would go to the 73, 551, that's step two, but they would also, which is a four percent increase, but they would also get the the three percent cola on top of that.

And so functionally, if if you take a scenario where if for five years in a row there's a three percent cola um uh from higher to uh to five years later, uh it's a it's a 72 percent increase once you consider step increases, colo plus longevity pay.

Okay.

Um so I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of an employee getting this new plan.

And so uh what I've also think I've heard a couple of times is that the midpoint would be kind of a normal place for me to think a lot of people would at land, is that fair?

We would not we we we're not gonna be moving people down to the midpoint.

I'm not saying that, but yeah, look I ideally you'd have more of a bell-shaped curve where people that have only been with the city for a few years are are um you know uh approaching midpoint, somebody that's been here for a while is is in the range of midpoint, and then somebody who's spent a much longer time here is uh instead of having people that have been here five years maxed out.

I ideally it'd be somebody that's been here for uh a much longer time that's that's reaching the the the far end of these uh case.

Maybe I should ask the question.

Um how many like what percentage of of our employees would be over 15 years of service?

I don't know, but I would have to look, but we do have a a lot of long time employees, like more above average for other organizations, other cities and towns.

Our employees stay a long time.

And that's where I'm going.

Yes, which is why software's working.

Right, exactly.

But they're all now they're all stuck.

So after we do this next step increase, now we have 70 percent that are maxed out, 70 percent of our employees.

I would like to fix that and give them room to grow, not just so if they're at 15, they're capped out and they say 30 into you know his point.

He's 21 years at the it's crazy to me.

So I want to I would like to help find a solution to that.

So and in order for you to help them, you really would have to say that you're gonna get them into the 75, 75th percentile.

Is that fair?

Yes, it's fair.

How do I do that?

So if you go back to our recommendations slide.

So the bottom two bullet points, we today have no performance management.

So I don't foresee a future where it is all performance driven.

I think there will still be a cost of living piece coupled with a performance piece, which if I'm a high performer, which I hope I am, if I'm a high performer, I would like to be rewarded for that with a performance piece.

And we just aren't there yet, right?

So this was the big heavy lift.

Step two is to we've started looking at our options.

Um that will that's part of the next step.

Okay.

Okay.

And then also we have no formality around how people get moved through the steps now, they just survive another year and they move up.

That's the only qualification.

Now we would like to put some parameters in place.

How, who to talk to, what that looks like, what data we're gonna use to make those decisions.

That hasn't come yet.

Okay.

And do you believe the employees trust that that will be a fair system and will serve them well based on our failure to communicate, uh things are changing, we seem to be saying we gotta fix this, we gotta figure it, you know.

No, I don't think that they will inherently trust it.

And given the lessons learned from this example, I would like to think we'll do it better the next time around.

And hopefully meetings like this help people trust the process more.

Um but no, I don't, I don't, I think it'll be a bit of an uphill battle given all that you just said too.

And then um, Zach, do you believe that the employees would agree with you that you've done a great job with the new job titles?

Sorry.

I I do believe that uh probably a month and a half ago there were some concerns with titles.

I I have no idea how many meetings that HR has had in this last 45 days or so since we initially started moving forward, because there were some employees that waved their hands and said, hey, I I don't I don't think this is right, and and HR has met with those and where um employees convinced HR in in multiple instances that something was not considered correctly and and adjustments have been made.

Okay.

Um I'd I'd like to hear from employees that they do agree with your statement or they don't agree with your statement.

I think that's feedback that I need.

And then um can and then just real quick while I have the mic.

Who in so again this morning at the budget meeting, you did make a bullet point about this cola thing for management, or I don't know what we call that.

Who who are those uh you don't have to name names, but who are the what are the positions that are not taking cola?

Sure.

So um the the what I kind of consider I mean the the mayor considers this the the um leadership, I kind of refer to it as the uh as the chiefs, just because it's easier to think about that way.

But you have the chief of staff, uh the chief financial officer, myself, uh the chief of police, the fire chief, and the corporation council.

And then so those are that's the the leadership team, if you will, and then there's an extended leadership team that is those folks, plus all of the uh other uh yeah, I'm trying, I was trying to think of a number.

Eight department heads, something like that.

So the eight department heads are not taking cola either.

They they are they are they they are being offered the cola.

Oh, they are okay.

Five or six.

And can you get me a value of that?

You know, I know you wouldn't have it now, but just email it to me.

What's the value?

In terms of the savings generated by or the foregone cost, how much of you know Matt mentioned six K for the council.

What's what is it for that?

Um I had one more, but can't do it, so I'll turn over the mic.

Yes, sir.

Oh, yeah, it was on.

There you go.

Uh Fraser Jones uh engineering department.

Um to answer your question, um, Mr.

Warrell, I uh do not agree with it.

Um and I don't think it was done in a very good job, and I think it could have done very uh much better.

Um I'm speaking on my behalf.

I reached out to the HR department um when this first got wind of what was going on and sat down with uh the director of HR and went over my concerns um with my position.

Um I have not heard anything from them uh since that initial meeting.

Um so communication-wise, it's it's in the in the tank, man.

Um another concern I have is we have two individuals here that went through almost 300 employees.

Um what do we the Jack?

We'll call it a Jack.

Um I don't see how that was a good process that these two individuals could could look at my position as a whole and really understand that.

Um I'm I'm speaking for myself.

I think there's a lot of other people that probably feel that way as well.

Um but just this whole process in a whole has not been communicated to the employees very well.

Um it was pushed as a an incentive of hey, we're gonna get everybody more money.

Uh and it turned out yes to to the time that it was pushed, that but the potential was there because we weren't in the budget restraints that we are now.

Um but since then, you know, it was pushed back out that hey, we did do a job title change, or we didn't do a job title change, but everybody's salary is staying the same, minus a few uh people.

Um to go back on to some issues that I think you guys brought up that are correct is you know, on the executive level, these higher-end people that work for the city got a huge raise at the beginning of this year.

I'm not naive to it.

I saw it.

I everybody else saw it.

I mean, and it didn't get brought up in this meeting as much as I would have liked it to get brought up, and that's why I decided to come up here.

Um but in a lot of these positions that we hold, we're you know, if if our anybody in our office or anybody in the city comes and asks us to do something that's above and beyond our job position, everybody that works here is gonna go out and do that.

Um I don't know anybody that's gonna say no.

Um but in that regard, is uh there's this there's a system already in place with a pay matrix.

Why aren't we just extending that pay matrix?

If you want to get to the point, and I asked Zach this in in our sit-down meeting with our department.

Why, if you guys want to extend that to get people further away from that max in, just extend the the normal pay matrix, go from six years to ten.

Um I mean, that's my opinion.

You know on you know, uh up front, but um that's all I got.

I appreciate the time.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

I have a question for legal related to the ordinance, Benjamin.

Um, so the ordinance specifically, I'm trying to find where it actually recommends the change of the proposed grade and wages from the existing pay grades and steps.

The um the ordinance does increase the maximum bi-weekly base salary for a group of positions underneath it.

Um obviously it includes the new position titles, but where in the ordinance am I finding this that it actually changed uh from the existing grades and steps to the proposed grades and ranges?

Uh I'm not an attorney, but I play one on TV.

Uh so on line 369, which it's it's not numbered here, but there is a it's just where it's stricken.

That is what ties that that is the tie between what council passes as the salary ordinance and what employees see and are more familiar with in terms of this pay and grade system.

That is that is the connection.

Okay.

Um I'm just gonna give my opinion.

My opinion is I would like to see if we get to increasing the maximum biweekly base salary, but as far as um to help those who are at the maximum of their range, but I think that there's a lot of concern and discussion that needs to happen related to the proposed grades and ranges moving from the existing grades and steps.

Um, to your point, you know, maybe you could work through some of these issues with the team and help everybody understand.

Um I think there's a little bit of lack of trust if they don't have the automatic step increase, is what I'm finally now getting.

Is that though their maximum range is increase, how are they ever gonna get to the point of of getting to that higher end um until you have like that um performance matrix and standards put in place.

I don't know how you implement a new way that you compensate people without managers and their teams fully knowing how to provide those performance evaluations.

Uh now I firmly believe, and I heard some people I I disagree with those who say that their job performance can't be evaluated.

Everybody's job performance can be evaluated based on key performance indicators that are specific to their job, but they have to be bought in and have to be part of that process and their managers to help explain that these are the core functions of their jobs, this is what it looks like to be a top performer, right?

And the staff has to be bought into that, you know, to the point if there's somebody who does inspections of a sanitary sewer line, and one person goes that f extra effort and doesn't miss the defaults in the installation or what have you and doesn't have those misses regularly.

Well, that's a key performance indicator versus somebody who's always finding them, right?

Um that's where I'm at with this.

I understand what you guys are trying to accomplish.

We went through this with Carmel Clay Parks, but I can tell you when we went through this with Carmaclay Parks, we didn't have a boardroom full of and Carmel Clay Parks is at peak summer times, you know, almost as many employees as the city.

And so um I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done before otherwise, not only if just whether or not we're gonna approve it, but I think the damage that's gonna be done between the relationship is gonna be such that it's in a hard to overcome in the future.

So that's my two cents related to this.

Counselor Lott.

Yeah, and I I just want to like reiterate like these are your people.

Like it's a team.

You guys are in this together.

Like Zach, you've led people, I've watched you lead people gloriously for a decade.

Um there is a way to do this right, and we as the legislative body can always be the bad guy in the other branch of government, but like find that middle ground.

Like take that ownership, take the team aspect of this down a level, two levels, three levels, and start communicating with them.

You never have to promise me answers immediately.

I will get them however I find them.

Um that's a promise forever.

Um, but like let's go back and have those conversations and and going forward, let's make sure we do that right.

It is it's it's disenfranchising, like as a human to do something that you love, do it for less in the public sphere.

Um, but you you take that hit because what you're doing matters, and you see its outcome and you see what it does for the people that you are serving.

And I mean, I look at this spreadsheet, and there are 270 people who have been with the city since 2011 or before, which is amazing.

Um that's a lifetime.

And for some people, getting to five year and maxed and then waiting on the 3% or the 5% is enough to continue to do what they do because we went under the presumption on the front end that we pay more because this is Carmel.

So that more was already more than they were gonna get somewhere else, but it's a labor then of love and conviction and you guys are new to the city, and that's something we can't change.

Um, but I hope you understand and love the city as much or are starting to in your role because it's awesome and it's beautiful, and the fact that we get to sit here and have these conversations openly is something that I don't know other people do, and I apologize for some of them myself, but like we get to shape it because it is so special.

So don't forget them in your thought process.

Don't forget that there is an entire subset of people that will be here longer than all of us.

Um the top leadership teams will shift, we will change at some point, and maybe we're past that, we become political in and out, which we see at the state, right?

Like that's the game.

Um, but it's how do we ensure that those people that are performing the services to the city that make the city happen are comfortable, specifically in times.

This is the first time we've been through any of it because it's the first time we've had a transition of an executive in three decades.

That's crazy.

Um we have the opportunity to set that right and make amends.

I know you're good people.

Like we know that.

Every I think even the staff knows that.

Or you wouldn't be here.

Um, how do we open that dialogue?

How do we ensure that we communicate earlier?

The original email about this that came through said you'll get updates monthly.

Um, and at some point we decided we were too afraid or too scared, and then I sent my quick, hey, we're learning about this in real time email on the seventh, and on the eighth, everybody got a letter that they had to sign off for.

So I'm culpable a little in that because I jumped in and it's scary when the council is starting to get information early, and we how do we get it out before?

I it's all about how do we communicate better together to make this what it needs to be.

And I I don't know that this honestly is far off.

Um I do think people that want to fight for their job descriptions should do that, and in some way those can be a little arbitrary because we're not 30,000 people in a matrix we need to set.

If somebody wants to be called the chief mechanic of moon vehicles, um, and they're gonna be in that job for 30 years and make sure that our fire trucks are great, whatever that looks like, let's let them have whatever title they want to do that within reason.

That's probably the wrong title.

But like, let's communicate and take this as an opportunity to do that moving forward and get to a point where we can pass something that works for everybody, not every everybody, but for the collective groups that are here in a way that we can move forward and talk about how to perfect it again next time we find something that's broken.

So that's my my call to action from this.

I I am not disheartened by the work you've done.

Um I'm very not disheartened by staff showing up for a meeting.

I can't I keep trying to hold back tears on it.

Um this is what it's about, though.

This is why we're here.

This is what government is for.

Um so let's just do a better job of making sure we're all on the same page and we get the streets plowed if we need to with overtime.

Counselor War.

Yeah, thank you.

Um yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna actually maybe just add my two cents from a little bit different perspective.

Um first of all, I want to talk to the the employees that um thought it was important enough to come here, and I I will tell you, thank goodness you were here.

Um you being here is a statement, and it it concerns me, but I'm also grateful for it.

So um it I I've been sitting here thinking what do I take away from this?

And I think what I want to um get out in the open is that um for for um since the beginning of this transition, it feels to me like we are treating the city of Carmel as a corporation, and we're looking to save money and be more efficient and cut this and and uh I'm telling you, when there's a fire and uh the fire department leaves, there are other employees who are there in the middle of the night helping that resident put their home back together or get shelter, or there is just no one in this city that doesn't go the extra mile.

And how did we get that?

It's a culture, and I fear that we're losing the culture because we want to deal with KPIs and we want to deal with um MBO and and all the the jargon that I'm I'm fearful right now as to where we're going.

And you know, I I look to you, Nicole, as just please keep that in mind as as you do what I know you have to do.

I think we're frankly top heavy in this in the city right now.

Um and it is uh it's hard to talk about because everybody is good, and uh, but it's hard to talk about.

So I hope we can disagree without getting mad, without uh fighting.

But um this the culture, you know, a tree canopy from an urban forester or someone who is evaluating uh better than anyone else and cares about a landscape plan versus somebody in a cubicle in some um consultant office.

I the the employees are what has gotten us this far.

The the point is that they have been here for more than um is normal uh as we've learned tonight, and you know, I want to say thank you, and I hope we um I hope we can keep that going, compensate you appropriately, do what we need to do to um be good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars, but man, I have seen above and beyond during my 40 years here, and I just I I don't want to lose it.

So anyway, that's uh so I'm I can't do anything with this except maybe cut a couple positions that aren't filled, but I want to get feedback and um yeah, I think there's more work to do.

Thank you, Council Rowe.

I um my recommendation is we hold this over um for next meeting and see how you and your team wanna want to address it.

What I would like personally, what I would like to see is um maybe maybe you take um the first quarter of next year work on making sure to get the the titles exactly right, getting the buy-in, getting the buy-in on the on the process, coming up with a performance management plan that includes 360 feedback from employees, um so they're bought into the process.

Um what I what I would like to maybe look at doing for the um or ordinance this year, uh, even uh if it doesn't include salary, like let's say if we move this uh remove the stepping grade change piece and remove the um titles, because we've now heard from other people that they don't believe their titles don't match.

Um and we have a decent representation from staff here.

Um is I would like to though see if we could move at some point um the maximum biweekly base salaries because as we know there's already people who are at the max for their salaries, and it would be nice if they they could have that increase, especially if they've been sitting there for you know 20 some years and not had an increase.

So um personally that's the piece that I would like I'd like to see, assuming within budget constraints, right, that we have, but uh counselor, I just wanted to mention um and I I I don't disagree with most of the comments uh uh made tonight.

Just in terms of the the timing now, given that um we are now kind of moving into uh uh I mean essentially by the end of the week, I need to have a new salary ordinance for counsel for for next year.

I don't know that it makes sense for us to have kind of two salary ordinances both moving forward one for 2025 and then one also for 2026 and which one passes first or or whatever.

I I so I I I think from uh given that you you're not moving it forward today I I think we kind of well we don't necessarily drop the the content I think we now um it really is becoming the 2026 and we won't make any attempt on the uh to change the step and grade part as we head into 2026 I mean we'll we'll keep that within the ordinance but I think in terms of uh again just talking about it now is the the revision to the 2025 that's probably dead and and going forward it's just what's the 2026 so there's two ways we could handle it we could we could take a motion to pass it with a negative recommendation send it to the sixth and then the uh the council can vote it up or down and we can start with a fresh ordinance or or you can begin the process of amending this ordinance.

Benjamin is that do you want to provide guidance on that Benjamin Sandy so yeah Zach Spaws on here.

You've got the uh the 2026 salary ordinance that needs to come and be approved um by the November 1st uh deadline otherwise then what happens is it you just have the salary ordinance from 2025 so the timing of it is is really tight and I think the what you're proposing um being suggested by Zach it would be a negative recommendation from from this um committee to send back to then vote down uh to allow for what has been the discussion and um feedback from this council on it because substantially I imagine they would be very similar based on how close they are in time to then not be incorporated into the 2026.

So then so we send this back on the sixth negative recommendation gets vote down by the council in the meantime Zach's working on a new ordinance to introduce on the sixth yes I mean it doesn't have to be a negative recommendation.

Yeah I mean you you can just send it back with no recommendation and you could have a motion for it to be uh with withdrawn as well if you didn't want to have any action taken on it uh as a negative standpoint considering you are going to be having the 2026 salary ordinance coming away as well Mr.

Chair yes sir um I would recommend taking maybe a stance on this could whether positive or negative could lead into discussion on what we would like to see different in the 2026 version.

Yeah so if it was negative then it obviously says if you bring back the exact same thing for the 2026 then that's yeah I don't like sending stuff back out without back without doing our job hate it when Plan Commission does that to us.

Yeah so uh so I would the chair uh entertain a motion yes sir uh I would make a motion that we um well actually I want to um I wanted so do we have a a policy of making our motions positive uh or can I say and and and then we vote against it or can I say uh send it back with a negative recommendation you would have a motion to send it back with a negative recommendation so we would vote for that and then you would vote for that okay great all right thank you so I would make a motion to return this to council with a negative recommendation.

Second we have a motion we have a second discussion um one question on that um being that this would end the discussion on the 2020 2025 salary ordinance changes for the last quarter of this year does that have a fiscal impact on this year's financial process by not making these changes or adopting these changes this year I don't believe there are any repercussions I mean the the the only financial impact I was thinking of is the the uh the the folks that we had identified that would be moving up a grade you know it was depending upon the timing of passage when they might receive an upgrade or uh uh increase this year but that would be the only ramification is that if if uh when council or if council gets comfortable with those suggestions as far as the 2026 salary ordinance they go into effect on January 1st then as opposed to earlier we have a motion to move this to the council with a negative recommendation will uh please vote all right motion carries unanimously Mr.

We'll uh please vote.

All right, motion carries uh unanimously, Mr.

Chair.

Yes.

Um the next meeting you had would be scheduled to be October 6th at 3 p.m.

October 6th.

Um that'll be the night that the budget is introduced on the council agenda.

Um we had a meeting, an executive session scheduled for 4 30.

I'm gonna recommend we postpone that to give you as more as much time as you need prior to the six o'clock meeting.

Um that way you're not as rushed.

I would agree.

Um we will then uh not address the other items on the agenda tonight unless we wanted to take up the um council royale and counselor lock if we want to take up um the um the plan commission item ordinance d 2780-25.

I don't want to, but I will okay.

Or we we want to address this later when we actually have um Mr.

Holland and others in attendance to discuss it.

Sounds good to me.

Okay.

That's what we'll do.

We'll uh not address any other items tonight.

Do I have a motion to adjourn?

So moved.

Second.

We will adjourn at 8 02 p.m.

Thank you.