Good evening and welcome to the 12th to City Council work session for March 23rd, 2026.

I'll go ahead and call this work session into order.

Our first item on the agenda tonight is the city manager's employee, the city manager's employment agreement with the conversation led by I think Kevin and Stacy.

Kevin's gonna be a legal side, Stacy will be HR.

Which one we're gonna go first?

How would you like to do it?

I can start.

I was just gonna say good.

Jim's gotta tell us what we can't say.

Um good evening, Mayor and Council members.

Thank you for having me here this evening to talk about the city manager employment agreement process.

Um Kevin, do you want to talk about the legalities of what we can and cannot talk about in the work session process?

Yeah, sure.

And uh thank you, Mayor and Council.

So as you know, the there was recently an executive session where you discussed the uh performance review of the city manager.

That's not what we're here to discuss at this work session.

This is related to the agenda item later tonight about modifications to the city manager's employment contract.

And this is an opportunity for the city council to discuss whether or not modifications should be made to the employment contract and the amendments there too.

All right.

Perfect.

All right, so um just a overview of the process of how this goes.

Um each biennium uh per the council rules, we do have a review uh in the first quarter of every even year of the city manager's um, we do a performance review, and then consequently thereafter, we do a review of the employment agreement that has been in place uh since her inception uh and then make any amendments to it.

Uh so uh the salary review follows the process of the performance evaluation as Kevin mentioned.

We had an executive exec session with regards to that, uh, which formalized that process on the 9th of March.

Um and then it is traditional for us to perform a compensation analysis uh regarding the salaries of the city manager and then those of surrounding jurisdictions for us to make comparisons to.

Uh and I actually included a copy of that here.

Uh the salary survey this year revealed that um our city manager is uh significantly below the mean of our surrounding jurisdictions.

Uh you can see there circled in red that it's uh almost 10% below uh the mean of our surrounding jurisdictions and those that we compare ourselves to.

Uh so uh moving on.

Uh some of the considerations for us to discuss um in that uh our city manager has an excellent reputation uh in the metro area and even further on a national level as well.

Uh City of Twelve Tens well run.

Uh it's a respected jurisdiction coming from the HR side, uh, people want to work here, and that has uh in large part to do with our city manager and how she has organized uh the organization.

The salary survey has revealed that the city manager is well below market, as I indicated prior on the prior slide.

It does not reflect a competitive wage of our surrounding dis jurisdictions nor the tenure of our city manager who's been here for 20 years this year.

Uh and then uh essentially I am coming to you with a recommendation to adjust the city manager's compensation to ensure that she receives a competitive wage and that is an appropriate representation of the work that's performed.

So that recommendation is to adjust the base salary to 224,211.

Uh this would move if I go back to the prior slide.

Um her base salary, as you can see, would be uh fourth in right in the middle of the pack of our surrounding jurisdictions at that base wage.

Uh overall compensation when you add in the total package would actually place her third amongst our surrounding jurisdictions at that rate.

Um so essentially I will open it up for our city council for comments and discussion.

Thanks, Stacy.

Questions for Stacy or discussion.

Could you go back to the slide?

Yeah, the Excel slide because I'm coming.

The salary you said was what this looks like her current salary.

That is her current salary.

So this is not the suggested salary.

This was simply to show you the salary survey of current.

Um then I was pointing out that if we move her base salary to the 224 to 11, it would place her base salary in that third column underneath the city of Milwaukee's 2250.

Do you see that number?

I don't know if I have a pointer.

Do I have a pointer?

No.

In the third column there, Bates, that's the her total comp.

Right.

So but the base salary would move the 220 to 2242 eleven, which would put her in fourth of base salary.

However, once you would add on her deferred compensation and the other um car car and tech allowance, it would actually move her into third place total compensation.

And of course I didn't write that number down.

Um, but it moves her into the third slot just above Milwaukee.

Okay.