Mayor have 530.

Good evening.

Welcome to tonight's work session.

It is Monday, March 18th, 2024.

Time's approximately 530.

I call this meeting to order.

Mayor, can I get a roll call, please?

Councilmember Seton.

Here.

Councilmember Juanato Rodriguez.

Here.

Vice Mayor Curtis?

Here.

Mayor Powell?

Here.

Councilmember Snyder.

Here.

Councilmember Garcia?

Present.

Councilmember Tarangle.

Thank you.

Here.

Oh sorry, thank you.

We can all stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, Michelle.

And to the public for which it stands one nation under God's role, whether it's justice or all.

Thank you.

We're gonna go to any unscheduled public appearances.

I assume not at this point.

So they're only here for the one topic that we're gonna discuss, so if anybody would like to talk at that time, we'll give them an opportunity.

David.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council.

Um tonight we have Igor, and I'm gonna butcher your last name so I apologize.

Shagov.

Shagolov.

Um here he's uh from HR Consulting now, and he presented and prepared all of our study findings over the past well almost a year now.

We've been working diligently at this about this time last year.

Uh one of the major uh things that we extrapolated from the study is we originally did it as a whole list of all employees, and then about halfway through the year we you know, I'd been approached by the police department at that time regarding some salary disparity between neighboring communities.

So we re-examined that and as a result we decided it was best to pull that data out.

So tonight you'll see not what's generally not typical of a common class study.

You usually have all the employees of all positions in one.

In this one we have the employees and then we segregated the PD as well.

So we can kind of take a comparative look at all city employees versus just the police department and what actions might need to be taken to help with the police.

So Igor will present his findings for you first, and then uh once we go through that answer questions and comments, then we'll roll into the city portion of the presentation, which is funding, how we're gonna be able to afford some of the recommendations that are being presented here and thank you.

Uh but the I'd like to start with um introducing my company and uh explaining who we are and what we do.

Uh we are independent consulting firm.

Uh we provide uh compensation classification services for uh all uh uh private and uh non prof non profit and of course government uh agencies and organizations for now for uh about twenty years.

I'm gonna skip this uh marketing pitch.

Uh just wanted to tell you that uh we dedicated to your organization and we will follow up on any calibration, uh any follow-up uh uh calculations and uh we'll do good service to you.

Those are just uh recent projects and cities uh government agencies that we worked for.

Developed similar projects in classification compensation.

You can see uh we pretty much cover Arizona.

We didn't include here uh nonprofit and private organizations.

We also didn't include the California and Colorado municipalities that I personally engaged and worked for.

But we can tell you that we did this kind of work for many organizations, and we know how to do that.

We have all the expertise.

And if we see that they match, that they close, for us it's a validation point, and then we kind of happy, we reconcile.

Minimum, maximum, median, tens percentile, nineties, and so on and so forth.

We usually trust medians in statistics more than we do means.

And the reason being is means can be very volatile.

They change if you have some outliers on higher end or lower end.

And they are not good representation of pay range for certain jobs.

Medians are more stable, better representation, better statistical measure, and we use it.

Or subordinate making very close to what supervisor making.

We call compression, that's a kind of dysfunctional occurrence.

Especially if the employee has many years of experience and somebody with no experience making the same salary.

That is typically considered perceived by employees as unfair.

So we want to make sure that that doesn't happen in our data and in your organization.

People also don't like when they do the same job, but somebody is making 100% more.

They say is uh is is uh performers are so much the difference in the performance such grade that you have to separate our salaries by 100%.

Uh we assign of course jobs to pay grades using again external market, what other agencies pay, and your internal job valuations.

How do you value a job inside the organization?

If you were hospital, I would say that uh and and you and you have two jobs, one would be uh let's say software developer, and another would be registered nurse.

Uh we would definitely say that your registered nurse is your key mission critical job, and probably you value those at the same level or more than uh software developer.

Uh if we go to the labor market and labor market tells us that software developer actually makes more money than registered nurse, it doesn't matter for us because in your in internal valuation, registered nurse is the job that assigned larger value.

Uh because you provide services, we certainly look at uh service uh occupations, and uh we want to make sure that they value it appropriately in your organization.

Uh and of course, fair and equitable approach to assigning employees to pay range positions.

Many consultancies will tell you will come and do the study and they will they limit their services by only showing you the range for the job.

They will say accountant should be making $20 minimum, $30 maximum, but they would not tell you where your specific employee, your accountant belongs within that range.

Should you pay them $20 or $30 or anywhere in between, and where exactly?

And that's what uh we actually do.

We have a uh proven methodology of assigning employees we call wage penetration within the range based on some objective criteria.

We'll talk a little more about this in the our next slides.

So we identify the target uh salary for each employee based on uh what you value in the in those employees.

So each employee, just like any job, just like any product, each employee believes that they have internal worth, that they worth something.

And uh within that 20 to 30 dollars range, each employee will tell you uh, well, everybody wants to be at the top, of course, but uh they will justify why I should be over the midpoint or or close to maximum.

And uh we will tell you why they shouldn't or why they should.

Again, we'll talk a little more about that.

Uh when we do that, it's very important for us as consultants, as experts in in compensation management, to actually track labor statistics in the labor market and and tell you what's going on in the market.

So not only you would know what's going on now, but you can predict or plan for the future.

This first chart here shows you actually the labor uh Bureau of Labor Statistics metrics.

They track, analyze and publish data that we we every every almost every day we look at the reports and study uh labor economics, and you can see that by September of 2023, and uh at the end of 2023 data didn't change that much.

In United States, you had 9.6 million openings.

Uh you also had uh uh almost six million hires and uh 5.5 million uh terminations, and you can see all that is important because we we can also break it down to public agencies or occupational groups.

How difficult it is to hire technical jobs today, like HVAC mechanics or um uh equipment operator, diesel mechanics.

Uh we have to predict what's gonna happen in the future with those jobs, how difficult it will be.

So it will help you to either retain your qualified staff now, not to lose them, which is critical, or make sure what you're gonna need in the future and maybe hire appropriate staff.

You can also see uh as tracking economic indicators.

Extremely important when you move employees or or decide how to increase salaries next year.

Uh typically every year, uh the uh labor uh in United States, average civilian employee receives anywhere from 2.5 to 5% increase.

Last decade it it was less than 3%.

It was pattern.

Every year, payroll would grow 2.5, 2.7%.

That all changed during pandemic and after pandemic.

Uh the last year, that in 2023, on average, employee in United States and payroll in United States increased 4.5%.

For uh in 2022, it was 5.2%.

It doubled what it was last couple of decades on average.

You can also see that uh we call this uh metric uh employment cost index, which is inflation of not goods and services like CPI, like consumer price index, the next metric, but uh inflation of wages and salaries.

And you can see here in this metric that right now employment cost index or salaries grew higher than did inflation, 3.7 percent.

Um why we also track uh the next two indicators, uh core CPI and PCE is uh extremely important for us because it in 2022, inflation was 8.2% in in the United States, and uh many employees actually companies and organizations, agencies that followed year over year, followed um CPI or consumer price index pay increases, uh like if if if uh CPI was 3%, they would give employees 3% increase.

Uh they actually uh got themselves in predicament, saying now we have to budget for 8.2 percent, which is exuberant increase, uh and not and it's fiscally sometimes uh not possible to give everybody 8.2 percent and what if inflation tomorrow will be 10% or 15%.

Um for that reason we track personal consumption index.

What it tells us is that even though inflation in 2022 was 8.2%, employees actually did not spend 8.2% more than they did last year.

They actually spent based on PCE or personal consumption index, 5%.

So they find a way not to spend more and uh again it helps us to calculate and and and give you inform help you to make informative decisions what kind of increases you should expect, or you can you can introduce next year, administer next year.

Uh we then analyzed, of course, your uh pay structure.

Uh if you can see table on the right side, it's very small, but uh uh I will explain the parameters of the table.

This is your current pay structure, which makes perfect sense.

It's very um uh it's a matrix.

It has exact same bandwidth or spread from minimum to maximum, 55%, as you can see.

And uh between each pay grade, it has 2.5% separation.

We look at it, we said that it's uh you know it's a it's a good system.

You can assign jobs to those pay grades, and if you see that next year, let's say your accountant value of the accountant and labor market went up from let's say let's say here from uh grade 18 to grade 19, then you can just move job, regrade the job to next level.

However, we thought that we can make we can advise suggest to make it even better.

And uh why the spread or bandwidths of pay structure is important.

Uh this is an example you can see here, where your bandwidth, your spread from minimum to maximum in your organization was 55%.

Typically, when we look at the labor market, labor market has, especially for technical job jobs, narrower spread.

So imagine that labor market for those technical non-exam blue colour jobs has 40% spread from minimum to maximum.

And as we align yourself to labor market, we align median to median.

So your midpoint to market 50 is percentile.

You can see in this exhibit that because you wider, your minimum is lower and your maximum is higher than the labor market.

What it means is that you it will be difficult for you to recruit because you offer lower than the labor market at the start, and then you pay more than labor market would pay for the job.

If you try to fix it without changing the bandwidth, let's say that you're trying to align minimum to minimum.

That's where you I mean employees will be happy, but you excuse me, but you will be overpaying.

You will be paying over the market averages.

For that reason, what is important, and the only way to address that is to maintain the same bandwidth in your pay grade as labor market, your relevant labor market.

And if your non-exam technical blue-color jobs will have 40% bandwidth, and your professionals, professional jobs would have 50% bandwidth.

That's what we would recommend, but that's certainly your decision and decision of your human resources department.

And uh we just think that your system is good, but it can be better.

It can serve you better if you adjust a little bit parameters of those pay ranges.

In the end, what we do is based on the market data and your again, your internal data, we assign jobs to pay grades.

This is an exhibit that shows actual our recommendation.

This is a subject of approval of your HR department and your leadership, of course.

But this is how we suggest to do that.

Let's say your accountant.

We think that accountant in your area in a government settings, professional level that requires bachelor's degree and some years of experience, would probably start at $26, and the average employee with uh solid five to ten years of experience would be making $310 to $65,000 salary.

Again, professional FLSA exam job.

Uh you can also see that the some jobs assigned to the same pay grade, like uh assistant uh rec program supervisor and uh associate librarian.

That does not mean it's the same job, it just those two different jobs have similar value in the labor market and in your organization.

Uh then in the end, when we so imagine we now have oops, sorry.

We now have we know exactly where accountants should be.

26 dollars minimum, 36 maximum, but now we want to help you to identify the position of each employee within that range, especially if you have multi-incumbent jobs.

Let's say that you have five accountants, just for example, then uh how do you determine their salaries?

And it's extremely important now, especially because of the pay equity movement and uh of of course legislation that uh requires equal pay for equal work under similar working conditions for different demographics for uh all kind of regardless of race, color, sex, religion, national origin, and disability and age and so on and so forth.

So how we do that?

Once jobs are signed to competitive grades, we determine position within the range, and uh we use consistent systematic approach to determine employee pay.

We'll uh get to this in a second.

For example, police scale, we recommend to have 15 years span.

Somebody with 15 years in the job would be at the maximum of the range, somebody with one year just higher would be at the minimum of the range.

And again, somebody with 7.5 would be right in the middle.

That's linear progression of uh pay progression assigning employees within the jobs.

That's usually what we see in the labor market for police.

Uh now that's not what uh you would see for other employees, other occupational groups.

They typically don't have linear progression.

For example, if if uh accountant with seven years probably would be in a in your relevant labor market, where you go to Ora Valley, you go to City of Tucson, you go to Florence, probably with seven years of experience, your accountant will be at the midpoint, right in the middle of the range.

That does not mean that in 14 years or with 14 years of experience, they will be at the maximum.

So for all employees, typically the progression is regressive.

I'll uh demonstrate.

We use we we have our own proven uh formula that we developed.

Um it's a logarithmic regression.

I'll uh show you how it looks.

You can see here the yellow line, one zero years to 15 years, that's police, and that's linear.

You also can see uh red line, that's a kind of orange, that goes from zero to twenty-five in linear pattern.

That's very much not happening anymore, because it's it's not competitive.

The blue line is what or or gray line in this in this case specifically, uh, is usually how employees may be assigned to pay range and therefore determine how organizations determine their salaries.

Uh for example, seven years you can see you expedite their growth to midpoint.

Somebody comes to you with three years of experience, they get to 30 35th percentile.

Somebody comes with seven years, they get to midpoint.

$33 accountant, just like what we saw.

But somebody with 17 years will get to 70th percentile.

And that's what we recommended for your organization, that uh we believe, uh and this bottom line is this is what we see.

I mean, we study labor markets very thoroughly, and this is what we see happening in uh uh in uh your relevant labor market.

Um questions so far?

I keep talking, I should have stopped.

Anybody have any questions on the council?

Um I'm gonna go to this slide here.

This is um it's this is subject to uh of course approval and discussion, but uh this is what we would recommend for your organization.

We say uh okay, uh first you you can have optional general or cost of living increase.

And uh we recommend 4%, but that's whatever you can afford.

Uh but the labor, especially blue-color jobs are growing very fast, very high.

Um if average, as we discussed, employment cost index increased in last year uh 4.5%, then uh the jobs in transportation or heavy equipment, uh blue colour, any blue colour technical job, increase double digits in some organizations, some specialties.

And the there's many reasons I don't want to take your time, but that's that's what's going on in the United States, that's the pattern.

You will not have too many HVAC mechanics and diesel mechanics anymore.

Uh some of some of the uh of those jobs, they become so complex that they migrate to professional level, like like wastewater operators that operate SCADA now, uh the uh computer systems, they become professional, professional employees.

They're no longer blue colour.

And uh those jobs are difficult to retain, they're extremely difficult to recruit.

Then we recommend cost to market, adjust everybody who should be in that target position based on the years of experience.

Uh that is as you can see the cost uh uh of 125,000, uh approximately 2.8 percent.

Uh we also recommend to do the exactly the same for police, just like I described 15 years span, and that is the cost over there showing, and uh the total annual cost not to include your uh variable pay.

So your your overtime, for example, may be now increased because employees have higher salaries or higher rates.

Um again, this is just a model, and uh uh at the end our uh analysis showed that if you do that, uh you will have uh first of all, every employee will receive your general increase or cost of living increase.

And then you will have in general staff, you will have 81 employees receiving you will have 42 employees receiving also market adjustment on top of um your uh uh the general increase.

And uh in police it would be 19 uh employees, and nine will not receive anything.

They already in their target position.

Uh you can see that uh uh you pretty much will make your employees you place employees in competitive position.

And not only competitive, it will be systematic approach, it will be based on their experience, on their uh time in the position, and uh it usually it is perceived as fair approach.

That's it that concludes my presentation.

Thank you, appreciate that.

Um I like to note on the record that um my wife is an employee here in the city of Eloy, and it appears that she'll be um affected or pay, so I want to put that on the on the record for that there's because this is with all the employees, not just her, that this is not a conflict of interest because this is this is going out to all the employees.

And if I may, I just uh respond to that.

And uh because it's uh based on objective criteria, it's not anybody's decision, it's uh it's a pure uh formula.

You you could you saw the line.

I mean everybody will be within that line.

So it's there's no bias and no subjectivity in those decisions.

It's it's absolutely objective systematic approach to assigning salaries.

Okay.

Sylvia.

Um the same with the mayor.

My husband works for the city of Eloy as well.

But that's my understanding is that it's not considered uh because we're not we're not going just for their positions, it's going for a citywide position.

So there's it's not a conflict of interest.

So I just want to note that and Sylvia note that as well on the record.

So I have a question.

Did you want to say something?

Yeah, go ahead.

Uh look confused or uh just clarification.

Is this the raises then or the uh salaries seem to be predicated on length of time in service?

Not so much as job level.

And so I'm I'm looking at this, it seems like most of us, the graphs you had uh seem to be length of time and with not much reference to what promotions or what's happened during that time period.

Uh because the early on you showed a the different uh grades and the spreads.

And so I guess I was confused between the like the time and service and those grades, because I think in a small town, I guess where I'm coming from, in a small town city like we have, the opportunities for promotions may not be that great because you don't have that many people and staff.

And so you tend to be quickly like the time and service and not changing grades.

Do you know where I'm coming from?

Uh and typically we recommend in this case, it's not just longevity.

It's not how long you've been with this city, it's how much experience you have in this specific job at the same level of complexity and the same level of authority.

So for example, uh there were cases where you were a dispatch 911 operator for 10 years, and you police officer for two years.

You've been with this city 12 years, but you only get credit for two years, because that is based on experience in this job.

Uh as of pay grades, different pay grades, those are just ranges.

Uh, and we just trying to understand and determine where employees fall within those ranges, again, based on relevant experience to the job.

Did I answer your question?

Yeah, I think uh just what bothers me a little bit is that, and I've been there, I guess that when you don't have a very large department, and uh the say you knew a hires or people haven't been on staff for long, uh really don't see much chance for progression to different labor grades, and so you get more turnover at that lower end because nothing changes at the top, which means you have to continue recruit at the lower end, then everybody gets in that same boat, so sometimes it seems like you have to overpay for the low end just to get those people.

And I guess that just was trying to put all that in perspective, I guess.

Um if if it's based on experience, and uh what this is what we would recommend, and you hire somebody, and you already have five accountants in and all five of them at the top, and you hire somebody new that has 20 years of experience in accounting in the same area, that person should go on top as well, not at the at the minimum.

And we understand that sometimes we're talking about uh increasing labor costs.

But when you think about this as a it's it's uh private private sector, they are being counters, they calculate it very easily.

They say what's they ask us what is going to offset my expense?

I'm I'm bringing people at 75th percentile, I'm paying more than I have to.

And uh we say and we calculating and we're saying, well, first of all, you don't bring because you have to, you bring because you have no choice, because they're not gonna experienced people, they don't like to get at the minimum of the range.

But secondly, you will reduce turnover, you will increase productivity, you will increase satisfaction, you will make remain maintain your institutional knowledge.

All this is money.

It's soft money, you don't see that.

It's just you're not losing money and on recruitment, on uh retraining, on uh uh loss of productivity, on overtime, and so on and so forth.

Andy.

You're giving us here pretty much a linear approach that's based on experience.

How do you calculate a work into this formula performance?

Because you could have two employees at the same grade level doing completely different performance levels.

Is there something built in for that?

This this tool does not, but uh uh this is something that uh city can institute on its own, like uh you know you know employee target position, but if employee is brilliant, better than others, you can institute some performance add-on or or performance adjustment for those employees.

We typically performance very difficult to measure, and uh uh very it it's very difficult.

It's not difficult to measure if you had a boss.

If you know your people well, it's not a difficult metric to measure at all.

Councilmember Sutton.

If if uh if I may.

Um so what we found when we did the study is we're we've been so far off on the market over all these years that to get to that performance-based measurement model, we have to get everybody up to market first.

So when we approached Igor, knowing that that piece is in that that pie, we said, let's let's get to market.

And doing the percent colas that we've done for several years just exasperated the compression issue.

So we wanted to address that, get compression in line first, with the goal and intent that later on down the line, once we are have salaries that are in comparable ranges, we've you know not eliminated but mitigated compression, then we can approach the HR department and develop more of a performance-based system as well.

So hopefully the end goal in the next you know couple of years would be to come to council with a new uh pay range to say, okay, we're gonna come in and once we're all to market, we're 100%, we we've addressed compression as best as we can.

The goal then would be to say, hey, let's do a four percent cost of living, but then also let's do a percent for performance-based measurements, and then we would then be able to allocate certain uh dollar amounts to department directors to divvy up accordingly in a performance-based evaluation model that you know to your point, then an employee that's excelling over another one could then get the uh raise and and go for that.

So this is part one of what we plan to do within the coming years to get us into a more competitive base salary performance, pay for performance, make sure people are doing their job or getting rewarded for it.

Thank you.

I have a question regarding the um comparables agencies that you used.

Um the way I look at it, you have Casagran, Coolidge, Oral Valley, Florence, Morana, and Penau County.

Those cities have a bigger budgets at the end of the day than us, especially Panaw County.

How do you make that comparable to a city that has that is on a growth, but the re the revenue is still not performing as a Coolidge or Florence or Oral Valley, Castle Grand, or even Panaw County.

How do you make that comparison when we're on the lower end population-wise, revenue wise, and everything else?

Um you think those are too big of a of a of a of a difference with our population at 17,000 versus Casa Grand of 70,000 or Oral Valley.

Coolidge is is kind of near us, but I believe their budget is a lot more than us, and I know Florence for sure is a lot more than us.

So how do you make that comparison?

I don't I don't think that's fair, to be honest.

Uh well.

So first of all, there's a way to assign weights to different uh I actually have to look up if we assign weights or we did uh equal weight for this um for all the cities.

Well what we did is um when we asked Igor and his company to do this is we took the market comparables are where we're at, and you're absolutely correct.

We've got cities here that are making higher, you know, uh budgets, they've got sales tax revenue, et cetera, et cetera, that far outweigh us.

But when you take into comparables to our other city to our city, say for instance, you know, a lot of times Eloise compared to Wilcox, are we losing employees to Wilcox?

No, we're losing employees to these cities, and some of these that like Tucson even and and Chandler and Gilbert, you know, we've got employees that live up in there that could probably work for those cities.

But we didn't want to compare ourselves to comparable cities in population, budget statistics and whatnot, because we're not losing employees to those.

So that wouldn't be a fair market comparable.

We are losing employees to these cities, these are the cities that are marketing for us.

So that's why we did the comparable to here because we want to make sure that we're market competitive in the region that we are here rather than a population-based statistic on another city that has the same population, same budget, same sales tax revenues.

It would have skewed it to where we probably would not have been market comparable.

Um it would have 100% to market, would have been lower, but we want to be competitive to the our neighbors to make sure that we we keep people here.

Hopefully, we can draw people from those localities to come work for us.

So that that's why we use these as our our demographic models.

But then it also goes on can we afford this?

And I'm sure that's gonna be the next part.

Section, that's part two.

So that's what I'm getting at is like if this is what we're doing, how how are we able to afford this jump?

Now, if I may also add to this, and yeah, that that's a point that this is your relevant labor market where you lose people, where you gain people.

This size, um of your positions are size sensitive.

But I can meet meaning that they would definitely will be making more money in larger organizations.

But I can I can count though those on my on my hand, like CFO.

No no offense to to your to your CFO.

But CFO at uh CT of Tucson uh was uh budget of uh I don't know, one I think 1.7 billion dollars.

Uh would be that's a size sensitive position.

That would be much higher level in value.

But your equipment operator really doesn't care how big is the organization.

I'm I worked many years in in health care.

Nurses and nurse, whether you have 30 beds or 3,000 beds, nurses making the same amount of money because they compete with all those hospitals.

Most of your uh service providers, they we we don't believe you should count the size.

Not to mention that there's no exuberant difference in the in the size.

I mean, there is no uh C to Phoenix here, there's no Glendale, there is no Tucson in this comparators.

Um those are your close proximity organizations.

So uh what I guess what I'm saying is I wouldn't worry much about that uh somebody has higher population and larger budget uh if you lose your employees to this or this organization, that they are your relevant labor market.

Well, I'm looking at the revenue source, like how are we gonna afford that in the long run?

That that's that's um that's what I'm looking at.

I I get that we have to be competitive, 100%.

But at what expense are we can we afford it?

Are we going broke?

Because right now we don't have the amenities of Casgram Mirana or even Penau County, you know.

Um that's how I'm looking at.

You know, for instance, I'll I'll I'll look at uh Maricopa.

They have a co-compliance officer, they're starting off at 2106.

So you're saying that our code and compliance officer is gonna be 2148.

There's a big difference there with population and revenue and all that stuff.

It that's kind of what I'm getting at.

It's are we over are we doing too much?

Are we giving too much though in the law?

You know, how are we doing baby steps?

Do we do this in increments?

That's uh of course the choice you can you can break it down into we actually have an option uh to not implement the full market but implement 80 percent of the market or 70 percent.

Uh the tool that we provide actually calculator will tell you exactly that uh in here that uh dashboard here.

Can I let me show you real quick?

And while I'm looking for this, I also want to tell you that there are larger budget, there are more employees.

And uh they got more revenue.

Uh to pay for those more employees.

Exactly.

Um here.

Uh you can see uh uh on the right side, upper corner, you have 100%.

Uh and it says enter percent of market amount if you decide to pay a portion this year.

If you make this 90%, you just enter 90%, this dollar amounts will go down, and employees will get lower market adjustments.

Uh if you make it 80 or 70 percent uh this year, and maybe next year you can do more, that would be another option.

We certainly advocate for you to do full range market analysis, market adjustment.

May people uh earn what they worked in the labor market as of now.

But it's again you you're right, it's your responsibility, your budget.

So you have that option here.

Okay.

And uh, Mayor, that kind of segues into what uh council member Sutton pointed out too as we move into this and get into a market analysis and we again compression, then we can shift into a performance-based model where you know you may you may eliminate a position or two where what we're asking some of the directors to do right now is to reevaluate their departments and look at positions that maybe needed to be added in the next three to five years, but just for everybody to think generally of what do we have right now and is that what we need moving into the future?

Maybe we we use your example of code enforcer currently.

We have two moving into the future.

Maybe we don't need to, maybe we only need one code enforcement officer.

So that would be a comparable salary for one.

I you know, so kind of looking at our workforce of today versus five years down the road and making sure we're just right size, and we're not only right size for the for our city and what is being what we're trying to do, but also making sure that those employees have the compensation that is as for Eloy and comparable to our market.

Okay, Dan.

I think to add to that too, I think it has to tie it back into the services the city is providing and what's the priority of those services.

You know, whether it be water maintaining or sewer or safety, or you have to look at those services and just put some you hate to say that put some value on it and maybe uh change those jobs or the pay to reflect that value at that time.

That just ties a little bit in with what you're saying.

My my thing overall is just how I guess Brian's gonna present next is how are we gonna afford this?

How do we afford it on an ongoing basis?

You know, if if they're saying, and and correct me if I'm wrong, is it saying that we're going to do a if it's approved by council at 100%, we'd give them we just gave them a four percent, five percent.

Four percent plus a one percent bonus at Christmas.

We'd give them another four percent.

Uh average is two point eight percent if you do all staff.

Regardless, police average of market is two point eight percent increase.

So so that's not a that's not adding a another four percent, because we just gave them a four percent.

So you're saying that that four percent was this fiscal year's COLA.

So you're saying add another two point eight, or are we doing a total of uh six point eight?

Yeah, add another two point eight percent.

Okay, okay.

And for some, I'm I'm sorry, councilman.

No, go ahead.

I apologize.

I just had a couple questions about that.

Is it mentioned?

I'm sorry, Mayor.

Um it mentions who there are numbers that certain are receiving and some not receiving.

This is based off just those ones that would be receiving those increases.

No.

Yes.

And then my other um, we tried performance-based at the police department for our civilians.

Um it doesn't always work out really well in law enforcement.

Um, because depending on who your supervisor is, and depending on if you got along with that person or not, I mean, performance base is a difficult thing to do in in some jobs.

So um that would be my only um thought about performance-based, because if me and my supervisor loved each other, then I'd get that higher percentage.

But sometimes, and that's not always obvious on the front end that that's a problem, but um, that's my opinion about the performance-based um for some jobs.

I I just don't want to take council's time, but I I have very a lot to say about pay for performance.

I studied that.

But uh again, this is your time.

I I don't mean I personally believe that pay for performance is uh not the best way to compensate employees.

But it's it's my opinion as uh the you know say personal opinion.

Okay.

B based on actually uh dozens of studies, recent studies.

Okay.

Any other questions for him?

Sarah.

So I know we've been kind of have a few questions already about this.

So I'm just on the the slide that's up.

The optional cola increase, that presumably happens every year.

Four percent.

Is that David?

Okay.

That's I'm sorry, that's not what we uh suggest.

Uh that's your decision next year, how labor markets gonna move, what's gonna happen, uh what's gonna be your financial situation.

This is just this year uh recommendation.

But you are recommending a four percent this year on top of the 2.8 for everybody but police and 8.5 for police.

Yes.

Okay.

And then each year the colo would be evaluated as per market conditions.

And we typically for cost of living order, general increase, we typically watch employment cost index.

If it's too next year, if it's 2.5 percent, we we as consultants as advisors, we will not recommend any more than that.

Okay, but this year, uh this year it's 4.5 percent the the increases in uh on average civilian workforce.

Okay.

Because we we we gave them already a colour.

This fiscal year.

We're talking about 24, 25.

24, 25 for next next fiscal year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This 4% recommended here would be a year after the one that we already gave.

It's not in addition to that one.

July first.

July 1st, yeah.

As as we always have, we've but we've always been very generous.

Um long as I've been on the council, that we've always provided the cost of living, whether it's four percent or five percent.

It kind of fluctuated.

Now that's that's that's facts since 2012.

So all right, Mr.

Igor, I appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll bring up Brian, I guess, or David or bad news.

What David, you can't do that from your desk or your seat.

Sorry?

You can't do that from your seat.

No, sorry here.

Okay.

I'd have to kick Mary out of her seat.

That didn't happen.

She said absolutely not last time.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Just want to make sure.

Okay.

Thank you, uh, Mayor, members of council.

So I'll start off and kick off phase two, which is basically to your point earlier.

How the heck are we going to pay for this?

I mean, any any salary adjustment that we make that could have you know effects on our our revenue streams, our ability to continue to offer quality.

Thank you, Mary, for helping me.

Just put it right out there.

I got some.

Okay.

Is that better?

Is that better?

Good.

Okay.

So like I was saying, and any um any increase above and beyond what we've generally been doing could cause effects on city services.

So what we did is we took uh Igor's recommendations and looked at how we how we fund this, how we've historically done that.

So tonight we look at the goals of the comp and classification study.

You know, how how are increases currently funded?

How do we do this right now?

And then we'll look at a couple of options for funding these increases that are being proposed.

Other budgetary considerations that we're faced with today and in the future.

Funding expense scenarios.

So we'll take what Igor presented at the 100% to market with a 4%, and then we'll offer a couple of other scenarios.

And then finally, we'll have question and discussion.

So the goals of the compensation and classification study were to be competitive and pay, as mentioned.

We want to make sure that we're able to hire and retain our workforce to our neighboring localities to have good quality employees here that are gonna help continue to grow our city and help us prosper.

Oh, we wanted to reduce that compression of the salaries that we're experiencing.

As mentioned earlier, we've um kind of band-aid solutioned it.

We've been doing these percent increases throughout the year, but we haven't been adjusting the compression, and that's just what Igor's study did is it looked at those years in service and position to help create a comparable salary when we go out and we offer.

So we want to make sure that we have that that compression taken care of that we can be marketable to the neighboring localities.

Again, like I said, recruitment retention are all big, and finally employee morale.

You know, that was huge part of this study as well.

We've got a lot of tenured employees that have been here a long time.

We want to make sure that they're being taken care of.

Um want to make sure that they know that we care about them, that we're looking out for their best interest, and at the end of the day, that's generally paychecks so that they can support their families and their lifestyles, and want to make sure that they come in every day head held up high, willing to do a good job, knowing that what they do and they're being is being compensated correctly.

So, how are increases currently funded?

Generally, COLAS have always just been supported through the general fund.

We haven't taken any other revenue source or expenditure source to fund these increases.

We've just looked at what we've gotten in the general fund and how much percentage then we can attribute to a percent, and that's been generally been presented by Brian coming to council saying, Okay, council, after crunching all the numbers, we can comfortably do a five percent this year.

And those revenue sources as you see on the PowerPoint are those five.

Take note that some of these are enterprise funds, so like your water, your sewer, your sanitation, your cemetery are enterprise funds.

So those those uh increases are reliable on fees and fines.

Um we do not use revenues marked as one time, it'll put us into a lot of trouble if we do that because they're one-time revenues, they're not guaranteed year after year.

So if we try to rely on those and they go away, we're in a bit of a pickle.

So here's some wage comparisons that you can see on the chart from all employees to the police officers and what everybody's making these past couple of years.

And then here's the benefits comparison.

So an important factor in Igor's presentation, we showed that 100% and the 4% and whatnot.

Um it didn't include the benefits, so we always have to look at that too.

So a little later, we'll see how much that does actually reflect the overall cost comparison and analysis.

So funding option number one to do this is we can just keep using our standard sources of revenue.

So you'll see on these four, we've got our general funds at 691, highway user revenue at 112, cemetery at just over five, and the enterprise revenue from water sewer and sanitation at 248.

So these are revenues over last year.

So in total, you're looking at just over a million dollars.

Now that isn't to say that we can take a million dollars and put it all towards salaries increases.

That general fund goes towards a lot of other expenses.

Salary funds are a portion of that.

I'm not sure the exact percentage, Brian.

Yeah, I don't know off the top of my head.

We didn't figure that out, but that's something to take and consider.

This is all of our general fund that's gonna go pay for a lot of stuff that we do in the city, not just the salary portion.

So the recommendation if we use the funding option one is just to continue to use these standard revenue sources.

Um the problem is if we do do that, then we run into quality of services because we'll have to pay for the salaries out of this one pot, which means that all their services will have to take a hit somewhere, and that'll be up to the department directors have to go through their budget and figure out where they can cut.

That could be a three percent, five percent cut.

Um, we are razor thin in most of our departments on our budget, so asking departments to cut anywhere from two, three percent would generally mean positions.

There's just not a lot of wiggle room in a lot of these budgets at this time.

So that's uh that was a pro.

Um, put up the pros and cons of this in the next slide.

Uh one of the pros in this for especially for the enterprise water and sewer is that due to the rate increases that council approved two years ago, we are expecting these revenue sources to in these enterprise funds to increase their revenues in the next couple of years due to those rates.

Because that's that's one thing to keep in to consideration too, and to point out at this time is while we can increase revenues in the general fund accounts.

If we're gonna give the same award and awards to our employees that are in the enterprise accounts, those enterprise accounts have to be able to support that increase as well.

Um, it wouldn't be fair to say that we're gonna get a five percent increase to all the general employees.

Oh, but sorry, water, wastewater employees, we can only do a two and a half for you.

So we need to be equitable and fair when we look at those.

So we take that into consideration too, is to make sure those enterprise accounts can also afford the increases in the general fund, too.

Any questions on the pros and cons?

No?

Okay.

So funding option number two is to reallocate a 2% food for home-based consumption tax.

Uh, that tax has been in place for several years now.

You can see that we collected just over 404,000 in the last budget year, and we're estimating 444,000 in this current budget year.

Uh, the fund does have a balance in it of 1.3 million dollars.

When well, basically 1.4.

There is an ordinance in place that restricts how these funds can be used.

So if council chooses to reallocate these funds towards helping with salaries today in the future, we'd have to amend the ordinance that stipulates how the two percent for food for home-based consumption would be used.

What's nice about this and the pros and cons is that it does provide a stable revenue source year after year as long as the state keeps it in place.

There has been discussion at the state level of removing the food-based tax.

So if that gets removed, we would we would lose that funding source.

Currently, though, um, from McKinsey who's been watching our legislation, I think we're pretty good shape to keep that in there.

Yeah, no, there hasn't been any news on that so far.

Thank God.

So fingers crossed on that one.

But it pops up here and there, and you know, as they look at ways to take away from the localities, it pops up.

Um one of the cons is we are using six hundred thousand dollars dedicated to the Shed Road project.

So if you if an ordinance amendment was made where council wanted to take that two percent for whom food for home-based consumption, allocate that towards salaries, you'd have to take that six hundred thousand out of that one point four million dollars, and then the rest of it could be used towards salaries down the road.

Was this uh fund also for parks in that too, or is it strictly for economic development?

Strictly for economic development.

No, it includes parks.

It includes parts.

We use parks.

Yeah, community and sorry, community and economic development.

Correct.

That's why the yeah, the sorry, the median any other questions?

Good.

Option three.

Now these are expenditure accounts.

These first two that you saw were revenues, these next two that we're going to show are expenditure accounts.

So currently we we lease vehicles from enterprise, and that is something that we take out of the general fund.

So when I showed that one just over $1 million in general fund, $200,000 of that is allocated towards paying our enterprise leasing expenses.

What we do here is we would just reallocate the funding for the lease payments from the general fund into the CIP.

So we would just budget it into another account.

We'd still have to pay for it, it would just be in a different area, be in CIP.

And some pros and cons on that.

Again, it allows for budget flexibility because now it's not an ex it's not a direct expense that we're taking on the general fund every year.

So we can now have that 200,000 available in the general fund that could be used towards sellers.

But con vehicle replacement plans may be affected because now that it's placed in the CIP, we're gonna prioritize vehicle replacements against other projects within the CIP.

So if we start running low on funds available, vehicles could easily be cut.

So you know, and that would affect police.

They they definitely you know have an aggressive vehicle replacement plan for the next every year just to help with some of the outdated vehicles that we're trying to catch up with.

So that that could affect them in that case.

Funding for paying off the general excise bonds, this isn't new.

We brought this to council a few times in the past during budget season.

Basically, these are two bonds.

We've got one on City Hall here, and we have one on the police station.

Currently, you you can see they're just over four million dollars.

So if we wanted to free up a recurring payment of where's the the city hall one, we've got three hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars that we pay a year in that bond matures in 2042.

So if we took 4.8 million dollars out of our uncommitted fund balance reserves and paid off that bond, then we'd have 386,820 to use as reoccurring revenues that we could earmark for the next several years until development catches up and we start having a solid tax base to take over those payments.

But this is an option as well.

We've looked at this option a couple other times with different things as well.

But that's two bonds.

Yeah, we we couldn't do both, we just do one.

Just do one, okay.

All right, then that makes more sense because otherwise we're taking a lot of money out of our savings.

Yeah, you'd knock say, yeah, you'd knock uncommitted fund balance reserve down quite a quite a bit.

And we've got a slide where we'll show that as well.

So one of the pros is you save 2.2 million in interest savings.

Um, but again, that kind of reduces the uncommitted fund balance.

So this is uh this slide just shows you where we've got so you can use a mix of sources, and we're not coming here saying that you have to use one over the other.

I mean, you could say we want to use a percentage of the general fund to fund and then take instead of the two percent, you take one percent, or pay off half the bond, and you've got options.

I mean, we could go into probably a dozen different scenarios with these four of how we could afford the salary adjustments, but um, you wanted to show you that this is the total numbers that are there, and we can play with numbers accordingly at the discretion of council.

If you know tonight, you have ideas that you want to throw at us and give us some uh suggestions for further research, we'll take those into consideration and put those numbers together.

Okay, but like I said, my thing is as long as we can afford it, it's fits affordability.

That's my only question.

Can we afford it?

It's affordable, it just depends on how you want to use the money to pay for it.

Now, if but this is ongoing though, this is it is so so we do market adjustment now.

We're not we're not budgeted for that from last year.

So we're that's an ongoing expense.

Correct.

It increased I think come on, Brian.

Come on up.

I heard I know so did I uh Mr.

Mayor and Council.

Kind of what this is is when we're looking at all these numbers now for the salary, this compensation study, it would happen July 1st.

So during the budget process, we believe going through the projections we're and all the major funds of water, you know, water sewer sanitation, general fund, streets, those revenues that we're looking at for the 24-25 year will support this uh, you know, these options, whatever option is uh that we go to looking at going in the next budget year.

So we would have to, if we didn't have the revenue in the budget, we would be saying, hey, we only can come back to X point on this Compton class study.

But the way when I've went through our sales taxes, station revenues, uh charges for fees, other revenue sources, you know, with if it's uh planning uh planning zoning fees, those revenues should so shall support this study moving forward because we would build those rates and we've already kind of have some preliminary models in our clear governed in and said, you know, where are we?

You know, can we support the highest mark?

If so, you know, we need to move forward with the budget and and see where we come out with.

You have to build it in, and you have to look at it because whatever we do now, it will be in two years at the same that same rate.

So, what happens if there's a downfall in revenue, which has happened 2008?

What what happens if the state takes money starts to start pulling money back?

What happens with all of that?

And actually, you know, we've kind of one of the our next slide, one of our next slides.

We actually have already looked at uh, you know, coming into this 24-25 year, it's already been uh pointed out that state income tax it's gonna drop.

It's gonna drop, and you'll see it in the second bullet point.

It's gonna drop by about almost a half a million dollars.

And then in 25-26, it's gonna drop another 365.

One of the things when we went into the 2324 budget with our budget estimates of where we're at right now, we took the numbers really conservatively because the state did not give us the numbers until almost mid-June to late June.

So when we adopted this year's budget, we kind of scaled back.

We didn't know what that number was.

Well, that variance in state um sales tax, the state sales tax has grown a lot in the past several years because of one inflationary factors, the cost of doing business.

State projections for state sales tax are up.

So when I was looking at what uh the league sent out as a kind of a placeholder, like, hey, use some of these numbers right now as when you're top in budget.

It should be revenue.

I say revenue neutral.

What we're gaining in state income tax will wash by the what we're losing in the state, or sorry, what we're gaining in state sales tax will be a uh wash with the what we're losing in state income tax this year.

So and then our sales tax is growing by um you know, the five to six percent and in our other services, that's where we come up with the 691 in the general fund.

So in the general fund, we should we shall support that.

The other thing that we have done, and council is adopted several of these going in the budget, you know, when we go through it, is we have some contingency that we built in to the budget for the last several years, and that contingency puts in some operating, you know, when we balance our budget, we still have a little bit of leftover revenue.

We put in contingency for emergencies.

Well, if we've got to pull some of that back and say, okay, we need it for some more of operating, we're not asking to cut programs or services.

We have some of that contingency that we built into our operating budget that we will reduce a little.

That won't affect uh any programs or services that we currently have on the books.

Okay, so I do feel comfortable moving forward that we can support this as we move forward.

You know, council says, hey, we only want to do X amount on our the cost of market, that's fine.

We'll build that the rest of it in for the years to come, you know, to get us to that percent.

But right now, yes, I feel comfortable based upon what we're doing, is we could meet that, those objectives that were that's been set forth.

Sure.

So on the slide that we're on now, um if we were to pay off the general one of the general excise bonds, it would have to come out of that balance of the 10 million or one of those other things, is what you're saying, because we can't we don't want to go below the 10 million, right?

So basically one of these other things would be jeopard.

We would yeah, we would need to look at that it'd be like an either-or situation.

Yeah, I mean, if council wishes to drop it below, I mean, that's that's council's wishes on that.

I feel comfortable with the eight to ten million dollar mark because that is still about around that 75% of our operating budget, which is good to keep in our um in our reserve in the general fund.

Don't forget about our ratings.

Yeah, and and as we drop down, I mean our our ratings from SMOD or standards and poorers, they look at the health, you know, of our of our fund balance.

Right now we're A plus.

That's our bond rating.

Um as they it gets reviewed every few years.

They look at the you know what's what are the driving factors?

Are we dropping in revenue?

You know, how is our fund balance that we're looking at when it comes to expenses, revenues to expenses.

So it could have a negative effect on our bond rating.

That's why I like the eight to ten million dollar mark, because it still gives us that 75% coverage of operating if we need it.

We have to go for bonding.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, if and too, as we move forward with the you know, the secondary property tax, having an A plus rating, you know, you get a better secure of your your interest rate too.

That's how you get a better interest rate is having a good bond rating on it.

But when we come down to it, if if council wishes to move forward, maybe we won't don't go with one of those uh items on there of the bulldozer compact or landfill study that's minus 2.3.

Those are all some of the items that were in the capital projects plan that we presented, and so those are things that we would have to come back and look and for that.

So it's just the just it's just one of the options on there.

I think options two and three would be just as good as option four on it at this point if if it's moving forward, you know, with it.

But this year, I believe option one is the mark we can meet.

You know, if this has to move forward in future years, next year or year three, we have option two to still fall back on.

So option three.

So this goes to the next PowerPoint you have retirement, workers' comp and all that that it goes up as well, too, doesn't it?

Yeah, one of them.

Yeah, yeah.

So throughout these, there's a couple scenarios after these slides, and in those scenarios, we do build in what it would be um for looking at overtime going up, looking at Arizona State when it comes to Arizona State retirement, public safety retirement, workmen's comp.

Those are all factors that I have looked at that said, okay, this is what it would be.

And here go ahead.

A couple of other factors to consider that we need to, you know, as far as uncertainty in the budget, is you know, we've always got a certain either general fund revenues, residential rental tax is one of them.

Uh you know, what's hitting us is the localities, and Brian knows also well is the possibility of Santana Corporation.

If Santana gets the votes and incorporates, we're gonna lose state shared revenues from that.

There's gonna be like I don't know what that estimate is, but that's a that's a kind of a fear for a lot of us city managers is looking around.

I'm sure the CFO is going, oh, we're we're gonna we're all gonna take a hit of Santana incorporates.

And and just we have and I mentioned it earlier with the with that two percent food vote food for home-based consumption.

It's real.

We we are we're always concerned every legislative session at what the state's gonna take away.

Because the state has historically looked at localities of what they can take away from us in revenues, and then they seem to always ask more for us to pay for.

So that is something we're continuing to struggle with under current administration, and I don't foresee that going away anytime.

It seems to be a trend.

We just keep a close eye in it year after year during legislation and do our best to try to get those bills squashed when they hit it.

But those are any questions about the budgetary considerations, because we know to your point, Mayor.

You know, let's make sure we can fund this, let's make sure we can do this each year is a high priority for us when we look at these studies.

But we also, Brian and I and the rest of us look at these real budget constraints as as um hindrances year after year.

That's what keeps us up at night at least.

Well, I mean, us too as council, because we're the ones who are voting for this.

You know, if we don't have the money for it, we may have to lay people off.

You know, or cut programs, and that's not what we want to do.

We want to keep everybody here as long as we have the funding for it.

Um you made some great points, you know, about state shared revenue.

Um you know we can't always trust the legislators over there.

You know, can't trust the legislature.

No, no, they're politicians.

Um I'm just kidding.

But um but it's it's it's it's an ongoing expense.

This is ongoing, and then where are we gonna be at in 10 years?

Where we we we don't know, you know, and so that's my only concern because you still have to pay for all the the benefit package as you're showing right now.

So it's more than just the financial side, it's what we have to pay out as well, too.

So there's a lot that goes into this that you know that with the council have you think about.

You're absolutely correct.

And for an example, the city of uh town of Florence right now is looking at increases in property tax to cover the increased salaries that they approved last year.

So it's it's not said and done.

It was in the paper that they're examining increase in property tax rates because of the you know, they're they're more of the highest right now that we're looking at because there's a leapfrog, but yeah, to your point.

So you want to jump into some funding scenarios where we can kind of play with numbers or Dan's got a question.

Sure.

If I look at this as a business, and if I have if I'm running a business and I've got a uh revenue or a uh cost-ish problem.

We've got two options.

One is to find more revenue, go out and get more sales, however, whether it be uh, you know, whatever the options may be, fees recharge, uh property taxes, whatever.

We got how can we include increase revenue?

Number two is how do I reduce cost?

What I've looked here, some of these options seems to me a little bit like a shell game of moving stuff from over here over here to kind of free up some money.

And I don't know, uh maybe we have to go back and look at some of the things we provide as a city and say, well, you know, what's that cost is and is it really necessary because we can use that money for salary?

But I think if you just step back and say just city's a business and I need revenue, I gotta control my expenses.

So how do I best do that?

So I just I don't see a lot of revenue increases here.

You're you're correct.

We're we got a very few revenue sources that can contribute towards this year after year, given our well, you know, we've got sales tax going up, but to your point, you guys did a great job last year when council voted to have that consolidated rate and fee schedule in place.

So last budget year, department directors are looked to evaluate their services and what they provide, how much we found a lot of discrepancies, so we adjusted costs to those services, presented that in the consolidated rate and fee schedule, and that increased helped out a lot in different service fees.

We're doing that again this year.

Department directors are going back through that consolidated rate fee, making sure that their schedule aligns with cost of services today, any adjustments will be made in that fee schedule and then presented to city council as part of the budget for approval.

But yeah, we're we're you know, to what was said in during Igor's presentation is into the mayor's point is you know, we're we're trying to get there as a city, and you know, we're we're looking at new businesses, looking at new commercial, looking at new retail, getting more housing in here.

So it's it's tough at this point.

I mean, to be honest with you, we'll we'll get there.

We are we're working really hard.

We've seen a lot of changes in the last few years as to different businesses coming into our city.

We're increasing our tax base, we're getting more sales tax, more traffic off the interstate that's helping a lot of those businesses that are interchanges.

So we are seeing that.

It's just you know, it'll take it'll take a little bit of time, but like Brian said, he's he's crunched the numbers, he's gone through our budget software, he's put in him and I were joking last week, the rabbit holes he's gone down.

It's like stop going down the rabbit holes.

But uh Brian's done a really great job looking to make sure that we do have the funding that we're we're able to make this happen year after year until the time comes when we do have more solid revenue stream bases like we see in our neighboring localities.

And you said it right there when we have we have the money right now.

We do, we have the money right now.

But if we don't, it's it's all on him.

Of course.

So sorry.

And one of the things, and I'll just point out on this slide is you know, the with what interest rates really starting to tick back up, you know, just on the the banking level, is uh I've I've uh talked to a couple different uh agencies out there, uh different banks.

Um, and I'll probably be bringing probably within the next month a uh um trying to diversify what's in our local bank because there's other banks out there that will give higher yields on a money market account that is secured by FDIC.

So you do that, that can generate yes, it's uh it's not a continuum, but that income coming in will help offset some of our operating expenses at our one time operating expenses like we we have.

Um, so that's something that will help generate new money coming in with it, but that's just something that we're looking at all aspects, you know.

Are we doing a good job with it with uh investing and getting a good return with the our taxpayers uh money?

So there are I think we have three um scenarios that we just like to go over real quick, and these funding scenarios are looking at what the the a four percent in this scenario, four percent general increase, a hundred percent to market.

We talk about how much it would be for a general cost increase, which is about two hundred and fifty-two thousand.

If you bring everyone up a hundred percent to market, that'd be 159,000 for police, 125,000 for everyone else, and so that general cost increase would be 537.

But when you look at all the other factors into it, benefits, you're looking about 759,000.

When you look at that 759, that's not all general fund.

You have about I'd say about almost out of that, about 80 percent is your um general fund, then you have streets, water, sewer, sanitation, and cemetery that make up the rest.

So it's not all general funds.

So when we talk about it, streets don't have its own water, sewer sanitation on it.

Funding scenario two is a four percent general increase, but only go to 80 percent of market, and you see just on that bottom line, after everything with the salary benefits, it would be about six eighty-nine.

So that's a drop of around close to about seventy thousand dollars.

So yeah, um, from five seventy-nine to six uh just about seventy thousand dollars.

Funding option three, we kind of looked at okay.

What if we do kind of a little bit of a mix?

Uh kind of a minimum of four percent increase and eighty percent of market in this case, non-police personnel, which is everybody besides police, we would look at uh a mix of doing eighty percent to market, but if they if their market is more than the general increase, they would just get the market.

That'd be the first option, which is the first bullet point.

The other another option we have in there looking at it is saying four percent for all employees or four percent for employees not receiving the the market adjustment because there's a lot of employees that aren't gonna get a market adjustment, so they would just get the four percent, and that would be about 114, and then we would do a combination of the two market adjustment and four percent.

So there are some employees that are receiving a market adjustment for like 990.

So we took that market adjustment of anything below a thousand and add it to the four percent.

So we kind of did like a hybrid method for non-police personnel, and that cost came up to about 227,000.

Then we just still kept the four percent general increase for police officers and 80 percent of market.

So you look at with the the salary benefits and other pay cows, that's about six hundred and twenty-seven thousand.

That is off funding scenario too.

That's around seventy thousand dollars less on that market.

So that would drop that this scenario down to you know, six hundred and twenty-seven thousand, which from scenario one six fifty-nine down to six twenty-seven, those are just three scenarios that we we ended up looking at with it, and this is just of a recap of that, trying to bring it all in.

So you got so you can really look into the cost on it.

What would it be for the the from the cost of the study, then looking at it when you're looking at uh benefits and other pay calculations?

This was brought up during Igor's presentation as well.

Um, so when we're talking about the four percent and the two market, some employees just going to market could be a six-eight percent increase.

We've got some employees that when you factor in years of service in position, especially in the police.

Uh there's a substantial increase in when you factor in years in position.

So, you know, we got the four.

I'm just I'd want to make sure that that's just out there as you know, even the employees that are under the thousand dollar mark that could still be a three or four percent increase on what they currently make, but and then they'll get a four percent on top of that, so it would be an eight percent increase.

I don't know if that was is that four percent increase for all is that this budget 2024 25 or right now next year, 24-25.

So when does all this go in effect?

January or July 1?

Yes, it would be not anything this fiscal year, it would be starting July 1 of 24.

Looking at next fiscal year.

Yeah, you have to put it in a budget that we approved.

Correct.

It wouldn't be anything on top of what's been this fiscal year.

We could for that.

We could though.

We could very little.

Very little.

Because they're already get well historically, they already get a four percent taken out across the board.

Yeah, we have a good budget for each year, yeah.

This year.

Yeah, current year right now.

But we've historically always done four percent anyways.

Yeah.

So we've always done that four percent cola.

Yeah, but the big change here is there's also a market.

Yeah, which is it's more than that four percent for some people.

I think we need to go with that coming from a profession where we had to go ahead and fight to get the 20 percent when they offered us two percent.

I know what our stuff is going through.

So I think if we can pull that scenario scenario one off, we need to go at that point because the discrepancy is only gonna widen over the years.

It's only gonna make matters worse.

Well, and that brings up a good point.

Five years, everybody starts you know, hollering again.

We we're we're losing office or we're losing this, we're losing that.

So, what do we do in five years?

Uh, we we can't continue keeping up with the Joneses.

You know, it's we have to do what we can afford with respect to all our employees.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I just want to make a note that um currently we've had we've been able to give um cost of living increases to employees, but for several years, we didn't the city employees didn't receive anything.

Yeah, um, when the market crashed, um, I think five or six years we didn't get anything.

And so we've been playing catch up since.

So um, you know, it we've thankful that the current city council and for several years back, it's been good, but for several years, you have senior employees who remember those days, and so they're behind, whereas newer employees are a little bit more caught up.

So this is kind of making up for some of those years where nobody got anything.

Well, I think we've done this before a couple years ago.

We did we've done this before 2019.

2020.

We did another one study in the company class.

We did, but we did that through just a percent increase.

We didn't do that through a market adjustment.

So that's typically what we've been doing since then, is is and that hasn't addressed the compression, hasn't addressed the years in service um to councilwoman Turangle's point.

Um, yeah, it was just flat colas.

It didn't help create that separation within the pay grades.

I thought we did it years before that too.

We we did we did another compensation where we brought everybody up like in 2016, 17.

Yeah.

In in sorry.

So in 2019, prior to COVID, we started the study, COVID hit, so it delayed it to 2021 and didn't get approved until January 20.

I'm sorry, 2020 didn't get approved until January 2021.

So in 2021, the study was brought forth.

Um there were similar scenarios, and then the four percent cola, as you're addressing, was applied to everyone, but it wasn't applied to market.

It was it was it was given to um and it only affected, I believe, nine employees.

I thought we did one in like 1617.

We did another one.

Um I don't believe so.

The last one major study that was done, um it was in 2009.

That was the comprehensive study that was done.

2016, I believe that was just a review of just the minimum wage that was brought up.

Um, and then the pay scale was adjusted every year since then.

So every year we bring the pay scale up to council to for approval whenever it gets adjusted.

Um, I believe that's what uh it may have been Harvey that did it at that time.

I I can recall we did something similar to this.

Yeah, uh that was um at the market.

We well, we did a market because I brought up the same concerns then as I'm doing now.

Right, yeah.

Well, my my recollection, but I pulled it up and it was 2019.

That that's when it began.

I think we we sent out we went out for um uh recruitment with public sector.

It might have started like in 2016, 2017, I believe, but then uh it didn't actually kick off until we got results in 2019, I believe, or that's what the dates that I showed was 2019, COVID hit, and it got delayed.

So I didn't get approved, finalized until 2021.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm looking at this trying to understand uh I went back to the original slides showing the city of Elay range uh from min to max and what the market range is from end to max and try to understand what we really mean by 80 percent market adjustment.

So with me taking that minimum range we currently have now and raising it up 80 percent of the range to the market minimum range?

Is that what that means?

I kind of lost you on that one.

Is that a is that your question?

Is it on yeah, yeah, please?

Because what effect does it have then on the people who slide are you looking at or at the maximum?

What slide are you looking at?

See, because that means I'm looking at this this graph right here, this thing right here.

Okay.

I think I must have a money here.

So the difference between the market range and the employee middle, yeah.

So maybe 20% under the uh part.

Uh can I answer please?

Uh this this slide here, um it just talks about uh pay ranges, not about employee increases.

What we mean by when we say apply 80% of the market.

So let's say that with uh seven years you're supposed to be at the midpoint and you increase should be one dollar.

80% of that would be 80 cents.

So what we're saying is reduce uh the bringing employees to target rates or pay increases by 20 percent.

So 100% means uh give employees what they deserve, where they should be.

So let's say if if you have 15 years and you employ this, you have to be at the maximum.

And the maximum is 40 dollars.

And uh right now you make in 35.

So the five dollars difference, and that's 100% of market.

We we propose to go all the way to the market adjustment.

When we reduce it by 80 percent, that means that five dollars will be reduced by 20 percent.

So in this case would be $1.

So at that uh 80% would be it independent of where you are currently in your range.

It would be what is needed.

It it's 80% of the amount needed to bring you to the target.

So somebody at the minimum range, minimum part of the range, somebody at the maximum part of the range, but all be getting the same amount.

Not all getting the same amount.

Uh market is applied based on experience.

So everybody gets different amount, and some people already at the target rate.

They already, let's say uh uh they already with their use of experience at the market rate.

So they don't get anything.

Others, depending on use of experience getting increased to get to the market based on that curve.

And when we say if someone is in a same grade, but it's uh a grade has a range from two years to six years as an example.

Somebody there with two years would be at the minimum part of that range.

Somebody was it was two years right now, it could be in the minimum, but somebody with six years would probably be at the maximum part of that range.

No.

Isn't there a pay within that pay grade?

Isn't there a range of salaries based on okay?

There'd be people within that range that would go from the minimum to the maximum.

Within the range.

I think I yeah, I think I kind of do.

So jump in if I'm if I'm not saying it correctly.

So what and that's the problem that we have right now is we've got, like you're saying, we've got that salary range.

So you got an employee at two years that could be making the same as the employee at six years right now due to compression.

And what Igor and his team did is they said they took that salary and says, okay, the two-year is where that market is supposed to be, so they're not going to get a market adjustment.

That six-year employee will now get a market adjustment because they've got six years in that position.

And it says in six years in that position, they should be making, let's say I don't know, the they need to be making more.

So they're gonna get that bump at that six years in position at the new market adjustment.

So this is gonna be totally dependent upon years of service in that position, not the position.

Correct.

Ah correct.

Okay, I'm with you now.

Yeah, years in position, years of experience.

Which is, you know, when you got in back to an earlier point about promotions and and getting the different promotions.

Um let's just use a police officer that's got the 10 years of experience, but then has been a cop for 10 years, but maybe in year eight got a promotion as a sergeant.

Well, they're only gonna get two years as a sergeant versus 10 years, and that we had to pull that out and look at that specially as well, because a two-year sergeant shouldn't be paid the same as a sergeant that's been in the position for six years.

Six-year sergeant should be making more.

Yeah.

I was looking at more as the job efficient grade range, not the individual in that range.

Okay.

I was a victim of that at the county.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Yeah.

I was there for three years, and then when the newer employees came in, they matched them with me.

Yeah.

And I said, Well, that was my argument.

Well, how come I'm not getting more?

And they said, No.

No, you're in a range.

Yeah, I was in the range.

And that's um, where's Igor's one slide?

And that's part of this, what Igor and his team put together as well as is the new minimum pay range.

So we're proposing a new minimum pay of $14.54.

And you'll see the different ranges that his team created with different levels of pay for for mid-mid and max within the 40th and 50th percentile.

Um, you know, this this is due to change.

You know, we're already expecting that next year the state will probably push this to $15.

So, you know, we'll we'll we're budgeting accordingly for that.

Brian's already taken that into consideration as well.

So, you know, it's one of those things we continue to try to keep up with the state and make sure that we're competitive at their level too for the state minimum wage.

And if that were to happen and they go to $15, then this whole salary range then gets adjusted.

We'll have to come back to council and say council per the new state guidelines.

We've gone from $14.54 to $15.

We've adjusted the salary ranges.

So we now need to do another market adjustment that's going to cause a cost us X amount of dollars to keep everybody within their position grades, and then we can propose on top of that another cola.

That also I guess kind of leads you to say, well, we don't go to the 80%, we go the 100% because you're the 80%.

The idea you catch up next year, you probably never catch up to yourself.

That's one of the cons of breaking it up.

It's you know, back to the mayor's point, it's do we have the money?

Brian says, you know, yes, we do, but how conservative do you want to be in moving this along?

Do you want to take a conservative approach for the next two years based on some of these upcoming uncertainties with budget, Santana Corporation, state shared revenues, etc.

etc.

And then in the next two years we we work in 10%, 10%, or we do 80%, stay a little, you know, have that nice cushion that the city council is comfortable with with comparable to city operations, and then that next year reevaluating it, and maybe at that point, it's okay.

We can do the full 20% and get to 100% next year.

It's Sarah has a comment.

Um I think um, for lack of a better term, we do need to keep up with the Joneses.

I think that we um should go the hundred 100%, and I agree with council member Garcia on that strongly.

I think that um we've got several good options here on how to pay for it.

You guys are you know can look at the the two percent um that we had for the economic development, as long as we can still kind of have economic development covered elsewhere, which in a way makes it like a combination of things, so yeah, we might allocate that specific money towards it, and then we need a little bit more, and maybe economic development goes back into you know the salaries or the general fund.

I have every confidence that Brian's gonna be juggling this budget back and forth about 20 different ways to Sunday, and we will figure out where that money comes.

But the bottom line is that we need to be competitive, we need to have good staff to execute our economic development, to execute our public safety, to execute all the services that we provide.

Um, yes, we are a business and we need to have revenue and expenses balanced, but we're a service business for our citizens, and we need to have proper salaries and the people to attract the right people, we need to have those salaries, and otherwise it's just gonna cause frustration and people will leave.

I think in general, it's just the right thing to do is to be on par with our communities that aren't our neighbors just to build on what councilwoman Curtis said in the end compensation equals retention.

There's no doubt about it.

Compensation equals retention.

And if it's gonna cause us pain to retain, it's going to have to go that way.

And the fact that it's hard to use one-time revenues like construction taxes for this.

That's just kicking the can down the road.

That is a dangerous scenario to play.

And I appreciate you guys bringing all these options to us to let us digest these for when it's time comes for a vote.

You laid them out pretty clearly, and you gave us a lot to work with.

But uh I think we all see which way this is gonna wind up going in the end.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Sylvia, do you want to comment?

Just echo yeah, it's a lot.

Thank you guys for putting this together for us because now we have options and um something to think about.

Um we want our employees to feel heard and appreciated, and that we are um doing our diligence and in trying to meet them halfway, you know, if anything, uh meet them halfway and make our community better.

Um, starting from within.

Thank you.

Michelle?

Jose?

Yeah.

Say this just cliche.

You get what you pay for.

Yeah.

I'm gonna open up to anybody, all the employees that are here.

Do you guys want to say anything?

You guys heard a lot, so any comments?

They're gonna say give it to us.

We don't buy even if it's just comments.

Yeah, I mean, you're here, you're here to hear what we're what we're talking about.

Here's an opportunity to get your guys' input because we're on the council side.

Let's hear from the employees, some of the employees, the police officers.

You guys outnumber us right now, anyways.

Especially with the guns.

Like some approach.

Yeah.

Mayor, members of council, Sergeant Jeremy Sandmans.

Nervous being up here, but when I came here in 2014, Eloy paid more than two sun agencies.

That was one of my motivations to come up here.

At this point now, I don't expect us to stay up there, no one does.

But at this point, it's the commute as a sergeant is three years.

I I'm not making enough money to support my family like I was.

And it's that's what's hard is the inflation and the increases haven't kept up with that.

And that's we're just driving every day coming here.

I I love working here.

I don't want to leave, but we're just not competitive anymore.

And going other places, it it's 20, 40,000 is life-changing.

It's it's money that can change our family.

So let me ask you this.

If that's an opportunity for you and your family to be closer to home with that type of increase, why haven't you made that that jump?

I I actually am in the process for DPS right now, sir.

Okay.

And and that was a hard decision because I I actually love you.

I I spent 10 years of my life here.

I when I first came on, I didn't think I was gonna stay the whole time, but I actually love this community.

I love the people I work with.

I love the city council, I love city staff.

It's 10 years, it's a family to me at this point.

And so it's it's hard to make that decision.

And for me leaving as a sergeant to DPS is a $20,000 raise.

From a sergeant of three years.

So it's it's a big difference.

But would you still be are you still gonna be close to home if you're um I I put in for Tucson District and I put in for district six because I still like the area.

Okay.

I I uh we all get it.

You know, it's I've seen the billboard, Salt River, 10,000, whatever, you know, Gila River, I I've I've seen all that, Chandler, all this stuff.

You know, there's sometimes we just can't compete with those signing bonus, you know.

But I mean, like you said, you have a great looking mayor, slate great looking council.

You know, we we we've we've provided a lot for you guys to have a better experience as officers to give you those, the the police department, just the police department alone.

Um and we want to make sure that you guys are happy here.

You know, I know some of you guys I mean I don't think anybody lives here in but you all travel from here, and that's a big dedication because you guys do travel far.

You know, we've even moved our our boundaries to make sure that we're able to keep you guys, you know.

And that all the steps appreciated.

The police department's appreciated, the firearms, uh all of that is appreciated.

And it it's it just doesn't help pay the bills.

And that's the issue.

Well to be um to be me.

I hope you don't get it, you hope we stay here.

Um I like you, I've we've worked well together where even I worked at the county, you know.

Um, I I get it though.

So if we if we do this market adjustment, would that reconsider your your plans?

That's actually why I came and was it was hoping that the decision was made and um I I was obvious I don't know council and budgets completely.

Um we were hoping that something would take place sooner, maybe to fund prior to the new budget year to hopefully stop that bleed of people leaving.

And to answer your question, yes, that's kind of what I'm waiting for is to see if we're I'm not expecting DPS money here by no means.

Um, but I I'm I'm hoping for livable money that I can stay here and continue and hopefully retire here.

We know you can buy a house here.

Cut your commute, cut your commuting to from hours to minutes.

Yes.

No, it's but no, uh we and that's why I want to offer this time to you guys so we can hear, you know, your guys' thoughts.

You know, it's it's transparency, you know.

We can't just sit up here and and make decisions without hearing the boots on the ground.

And so that's why I want to give you guys an opportunity to to speak.

So it's important to us.

You know, we we we sit up here and and we make the rules, you know, and you guys execute for us.

So the only way we're gonna be successful is we have the open line communication that I'm doing right now.

Yes, sir, and that that we all work together, you know, for the common good of the city of Eloy.

That's what it boils down to.

Um we we're we're not getting rich up here by all means, by any means.

Um this is something that we do because we love our community.

And uh I know it it it shows with you guys, and so it is appreciated.

You know, it really is appreciated.

Well, thank you so much.

If that's the case, you wouldn't have a new police department over there or or gun.

I mean, we but but it we have to protect the people who we who who are residents.

And it's not just them, it's those knuckleheads coming off I 10.

Absolutely.

You know, so we want to make sure you guys have all the tools to protect our city.

So that's it, brother.

Thanks.

Anyone else?

Luvio.

Mayor, city council.

Yes.

I just I I think that the money's gonna come out regardless if you want it to or not.

Recruitment, retention, um trying to get uh more people to come out here, and then when we lose people from not making changes that would help people stay, it's gonna cost us in the long run.

So I mean this is a very um this is a good option right now to get caught up and start thinking about the future and moving forward with planning, and it sounds like that's what's happening here today.

So um I don't live in Ely, live in Arizona City, but I've been here for longer than 20 years, so that's kind of where my perspective comes from.

And and you you volunteer your time too.

I I spent a lot of time in Egley.

Of course, you know, so I get all that.

Um it's sad, and it's something that if we could have just made this adjustment sooner, we could have kept some of those people just based on that.

So we can't compete with sign-on bonuses though.

I think just making sure that you let everybody know they're valued and they're putting forth the effort and you're considering these options is definitely something that people pay attention to.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

Anyone else?

The one who's been disturbing our meeting with his radio all day.

Um just to echo off what Sergeant Simon said, is there a way you could police officers can get this installed sooner instead of waiting in July?

Maybe to stop the hemorrhage of losing the officers we have now.

We have about four or five people that may be leaving before then.

And I would like to keep them.

They're good officers.

So I'm not sure if that's within the power or within the budget.

But the officers will be losing or have lost.

They're good.

We should have kept them.

And that's all we have for you.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, go ahead, Sarah.

I guess if you know, if that was an option, this is a question for Brian and David.

Um, if something was gonna happen sooner, I don't know how you know nothing works in government really very quickly, but if it was to happen sooner, is for a uh is there uh could we use one time revenue for something like that?

Sure.

For the rest of this year.

Uh Mr.

Mayor, members of council, vice mayor Curtis.

Um, we can take a look and see within the budget, because you know, we have to stay within the confines of the the budget itself for the 2324 budget year.

It would be half the it's something that we'd have to go back and dissect and and look and see, hey, this is um how much we have available within the you know, for meeting some of this now.

If we meet it now, it's not gonna happen next fiscal year.

It's it's gonna happen now, but we have to build those adjustments in to next year's budget.

So it's it's just pushing some of it off now and how it will impact operating budgets within the those funds.

So I mean it's something that at this time don't know if if it's uh what's feasible and what's not.

We'd have to go back and look at that and come back at uh you know, within the next two to three weeks and and and give an update of saying this is where we're at with uh um operating budgets and and where we're at with uh implementing certain targets and and stuff of that nature.

So I mean, could some of it be?

Yeah, I mean you could you could put some, but is it gonna be enough for what uh people have come up?

Don't know.

I mean, because everyone's has a different scenario when it comes to the funding.

So you don't know if it would be that person, it's what they're looking for, what they're not.

So but we could bring it back and and look at it, and then um you know, city the city manager can come back and give an update of you know, yeah, maybe we can do two percent.

You know, what's what is two percent, what's three, you know, don't know.

But it would almost it would only be it wouldn't be across the board, it'd be individual basis.

And if that's what council wants is individual or everything, because that's a difference between the general increase versus the market, the markets targeting certain you know, employees based upon their years of service.

So it's it would be on a individual basis instead of a citywide basis.

So what about that's on the market increase?

Yes, so we couldn't do any of the market increase right now.

We couldn't do like half now, half July first.

We if if you if council said you know, we'd like to implement 40 percent right now.

I would need to go back and look at what is 40 percent and can we afford that in this year's budget without violating what we've did on adopted when we adopted the budget, and will it go over those?

I would have to go back and analyze all that uh direction and then get back to you in the third microphone.

And that would mean that if they were the officers receiving the adjustments, because if they're on that one of those nine not receiving the adjustments, it wouldn't make a difference.

Well I think if we're gonna do that for one department we got to do from all departments somehow just across the board you can't just pick and choose I mean it was your question though if you're already at market then you don't get an adjustment which I think is okay because you're already at market but it's for the people that aren't at market that we're doing this.

So is council looking at the 100% that was something that uh city manager and I were talking about are we looking at 100% of the market or trying to do uh 60% and then 20% and 20% you know on cash flow basis like it's you're saying to make sure that we're or a hundred percent what is council's direction and then I can go back and say okay this is based upon some of the information uh 50% of the hundred percent is going to be eighty thousand dollars right now you know for PD and sixty for the rest of the non police officers is it it's just more that direction so I could then crunch some numbers and give them to the city manager for him to pass along to well we can't make a decision tonight we can only direct correct yeah it's it's kind of the direction to I I think just hearing about everybody we're all we're the 100% funding market value the mark cost of market and then the like the four percent and that four percent would be part of the 2520 or 24 25 six but yeah 24 25 so we're looking at the dishearing because we can't vote on this the hundred direction yeah yeah the hundred percent just kind of how we breaking it up for the next yeah yeah and that's the direction that the the guidance on there from my standpoint because when we build the budget as we're doing right now with departments are doing their budgets right now so we build that salary in there and we we go through the budget process and and balance and see where we're at that's the first step on the whole process here's where we're at if with it but if council's wishing to say take that 100% you know as a guidance not a direct you know saying we would if if it's feasible to do x percent of the 100 now I will crunch the I will go back and look at it and then talk and bring that information to the city manager that can bring it back to council and saying we can you know if we can afford to do so much we will do it.

But what is that is there a guidance on a percentage you want us to look at now versus because yeah because we're almost at the last quarter of our correct yeah yeah that last quarter job is that well if you do a hundred percent then you you're you're taking it you're building it in next year anyways I mean so you're you're looking at the front of the what would it be right now but it's all I mean some of them are substantial and so I mean it would be can I if I put that in the budget right now what would that department look like in the next three months will they exceed what was adopted by council for salaries and benefits so on that and just to recap this is for length of service that's here so if we have an uh somebody who's been here for 18 years and and you have somebody who's been here for six years we're boosting that 18 year could be employee higher could be it depends on what scale so what if that's that 18 year position is getting paid less than the so you won't but I I can go ahead yeah so so the the the newer position wouldn't get a boost only the higher the the the owner of the position that's not not necessarily though you could have one a one year employee getting because of the way the new pay scale the new adopted scale is coming out they would be jumping up with the years of service because instead of being at the very beginning they might be it in in that up a little bit well it's I'll I think I got sylvia but it's as mentioned in the coac what we've typically had to do is because we haven't been market comparable in our salary range hasn't reflected that we have had to hire first year employees in at mid-range so yeah you could have an employee that was hired within the last two to three years that was hired in at mid range it is now within market mid will not get an increase but an employee that was 18 years might be a little bit behind or at that person but should get a bomb and that's where we've again back to that compression where we've created that compression where two year employees should not be making the same amount as a tenured employee at that point.

And that's where we've again back to that compression where we've created that compression where two year employees should not be making the same amount as a tenured employee at that point.

Yeah.

Okay.

So yes, Mayor, to clarify, it's based on years in the position.

Years in the position.

Correct.

Okay.

So not necessarily years.

Not the person.

Service.

At the person.

Correct.

Position.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yes.

So like Dave explained, if a person comes in and was hired at a higher rate of pay because of their years of experience, is now making more or equip, or I should say equivalent to an employee that's been here for seven years, they're now compressed.

So this is going to decompress them.

That's gonna bring the higher tenured employee in that position is going to be compensated and be bumped up.

The new employee who's only been in that position for a year or two is not going to receive a market adjustment.

They're going to remain where they're at.

The higher tenured employee is going to be compensated correctly and move up.

Okay.

All right, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Brian, I think you need to go back and also the departments and take a hard look on what projects are underway and what is actually gonna get done this year.

Because you may find some money for some projects that uh it's gonna be like May, June time frame.

They may or may not get done this year.

And so if some of those are on the fence, it may be some money you can find there to help pay for this.

Uh Ms.

Mayor and uh Councilman Snyder.

Yeah, those a lot of those funds are in like the Capital Projects Fund, or if it's in another fund, so we can't just move the budgets around.

So I I need to go back and look at because when we adopt through the the schedule A through G, we adopt the general fund by departments, and then everything else is by fund.

So when we adopt it by departments, we need those departments need to stay within that budget authority that council said in the auditor general's report, the the the schedule A through G.

So going back through if council's guidance tonight is like go back and if you can do a hundred percent, we can look at that, we can see what fits within all the departments.

If it's 70 percent of that cost of market, maybe we can apply 70 percent now, then the the another 30 percent is just gonna be on July 1st.

So you you're it's paying it now, but it's still going to be part of the 25, 24, 25 budget.

Uh council member Snyder, I think it Brian, correct me if I'm wrong.

I think a good example if we're talking about PD would be cost savings within overtime.

So if there's if we can afford to do an increase now for say PD, it may come out of overtime.

And I don't know that you know that would be a discussion with PD is if we cut what's left of overtime.

I know the expenditure is quite high already.

How would that affect services?

So I don't know, that would be a discussion with the interim chief.

And I'm looking at Captain Jerome over there.

So you know that that is where we we could find some additional funds available to us on the PD budget.

We just need to analyze it if council's guidance is if you can do 100% now, please do it, then we'll analyze it and bring it back to you.

Uh well, I mean, right now with the budget, yeah.

I mean, I'm trying to balance that with the all the other deadlines we have with budget.

So I mean I'd be analyzing it and bring it back as soon as I can.

So July 2nd.

That that depends on if council if council desires it to be an open discussion item for council meeting, then we wouldn't be able to have it until the April eighth council meeting, I believe is the date.

If council desires that they would just like it in a written memo format, then we can probably have it done in a a week, week and a half, put together a memo and send all of council that memo.

It just would if I'm getting some headshakes, I think a memo would suffice because then you'd get the information a lot sooner than if we waited for the the only thing about that is we may have conversations about the direction that you're doing on it this year budget.

We may have some questions about that.

You could and we could go through a mayor-vice mayor meeting.

Um you could we could schedule individual meetings up to three council members with Brian and myself to talk about those questions, and then we could provide those questions and answers again in the format back to you guys.

I mean, we got some options of how we could have another discussion outside of having a general work session to work out some of those additional comments or concerns about the the funding allocation.

So it's it's at the direction of mayor, you and Vice Mayor if that's what you guys want to do.

Okay.

All right.

Get some numbers together and we'll decide.

Memo format, week and a half out.

Let's we'll we'll talk to you.

We'll meet with you guys, meet and Sarah will meet with you guys.

Okay.

And then go from there.

Sounds like a plan.

Okay.

We'll build those.

So we're looking at hundred funding at 100% with a four percent direction.

I'm not yeah, I'm yes, the four percent stuff.

For next year, it's the well, that's actually the budget.

Yeah, so yeah, what what Brian can do now is is um, given that we have direction of where council wants to go, is Brian will go back into the budgeting software and build out a budget that shows it at the 100% with a four percent general increase so we can see what those numbers look like.

So the department directors, because our budgets are due Wednesday.

So we're we're gonna be doing some other tweaking, it looks like here this week.

It'll be some crunching, but at least now we have some direction of what our budgets will look like, what our salaries are look like, and how we can adjust for that within um our operating.

But uh, we'll definitely look at what we can do to make either a full 100% or a portion of the 100% effective at a you know as soon as possible, uh, given that funding's available.

Um, you know, we'll look into if we just do it for the PD, if we just do it for all employers, or you know, we'll we'll look at both of that and provide it back to council to evaluate.

Yeah, okay.

All right.

Anything else?

I would just I I got something real quick, Mayor.

Go ahead.

I mean, I would just like to thank PD, Jeremy, and the chief the previous chief and the leadership, the captains had presented this to us back in when was it, Jeremy?

May last year.

Yeah, um, Jeremy had done Sergeant Samonds had done some uh preliminary salary work for us and brought it to our light, and we had already started the study.

So I I want to thank everybody that's been involved.

Sylvia Igor had to leave, unfortunately, but his team has stuck it through with us.

We've gone through several iterations, and they've been very Igor and his team have been very patient with us.

Brian has worked diligently as well, the crunchy numbers to make sure to your point that we we can afford it, because that was a big question going into this as we we definitely understand, and you know, as leadership at the city, we want to make sure that our employees are taken care of and that everybody has money for themselves and their families and feel comfortable working here, but having limited resources and in a growing community, we're realistic of that.

So you know, we went really hard with the PD.

We pulled them out separately from the study so that we could just look at PD and understand the dynamics that's there and how we could do different things with the police department um in relationship and sometimes out of the scope of the rest of the employees.

So thank you for everybody who was involved.

We really did work hard.

We've had a lot of feedback from the police department.

Thank you, Gall.

Really appreciate you guys being open, honest, and having transparent conversations with us throughout this process.

And I know it's been hard for you guys too.

And I I really do appreciate the the comments you had and being able to speak with us.

So yeah, and you and council for listening to us tonight too.

But so maybe what you guys can do too is is um give us an update, like if we fund this 100% on the market value, what the new starting pos this positions and what the starting pay is gonna be.

I'd like to it'd be interesting to see what the new pay is gonna be moving forward.

Yeah, oh we we yeah, we we have that available.

That was in one of the slides.

There's just a broader document for that.

Okay, yep.

Compare you want to see that comparable to what it is now because I think we're at 1420 an hour right now.

We can provide that.

Absolutely.

I mean, this is for we're also doing this for the new employees that are being gonna be hired as well.

So I have to see what it's gonna what it's gonna be for new employees, starting off as you know, even as low as the lifeguards all the way up, and so maybe see what it's gonna well the new position is gonna be.

Andy, well, just as a positive note on this, uh in the end, if we're at market value, it should make it easier for us to recruit all around.

So I just see it as a positive all-around.

And retain.

All right, anything else?

All right, guys, thank you all for coming.

Truly appreciate you guys keep up the hard work and uh your voices were heard.

Have a good night.