The Brentwood Board of Aldermen will take up the issue of city employee compensation at its Monday meeting, according to Mayor Chris Thornton.
Thornton said in an email to the aldermen, and forwarded to 40 South News, that a bill will be introduced to implement the recommendations from Higbee Associates, which analyzed Brentwood’s compensation practices in August 2014.
The object of the bill would be to bring Brentwood’s benefits into line with cities compared with Brentwood in the study. Read Thornton’s email to aldermen.
Thornton explains:
“Historically Brentwood has not observed salary caps on any position within the city (the City currently has established salary ranges for each position, but employees have been allowed to exceed the top end of the range). A city employee who performed at an acceptable level received an increase of about 3 percent each year. Over time, as a result of compounding, this practice led to many Brentwood employees receiving salaries considerably higher than those holding similar positions in other comparable municipalities. As the City’s payroll has grown over the years, the impact of the compounding effect has become more pronounced. Presently, the City’s annual payroll is $6.7M.
“In other words, we would try to make salaries for all City positions consistent with some target level relative to the comparator cities. Instead of having some positions that lead the market and some positions that lag the market, we would attempt to bring all positions to some consistent level defined by the market (for example, 50th or 75th percentile). I think this is very good advice. I encourage the Board to embrace the market approach to employee compensation going forward.”
Thornton says the issue is one of the most important facing Brentwood. “…the City should adopt a compensation plan that is rational and sustainable or we may find the City in a financially untenable position and much sooner than we might think!”
Brentwood’s top positions that now pay above the market will be fixed until the salaries paid by other municipalities catch up to those being paid by Brentwood. Over time, the city will be paying salaries that are comparable to those paid by other municipalities for similar positions.
He said the city should to be fair to the employees, “but as elected officials we have an obligation to be responsible with the taxpayers’ money…”
According to the study, using the current three percent salary annual increase, over five years the additional cost to the city would be $3,188,530. Using the Higbee recommendation the cost after five years would be $1,845,635.
Read Thornton’s email to aldermen.
See also: Brentwood compensation bill vote failed, reintroduced at next BOA meeting (Nov. 7, 2013), Brentwood votes 5-4 against employee compensation study (Nov. 19, 2013)
I absolutely endorse going forward with salary structure reforms.
Municipalities all over the country, large & small, are flirting with bankruptcy (and sometimes going bankrupt) due to giant pension obligations on sweet deals given to public employees in the past. Given knowingly by politicians who knew that they wouldn’t be in office when the bill came due. Kudos to the mayor and members of the board who are behind these much needed changes. We’re mortgaging the future by overpromising and overpaying now.
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