CitCity Hall managers hoping to cash in on a new salary plan
might find councilmen unsympathetic following a bruising fight to
enact the wage policy.
Gilroy – City Hall managers hoping to cash in on a new salary plan might find councilmen unsympathetic following a bruising fight to enact the wage policy.
The controversial shift in pay ranges, approved by council in a 5-1-1 vote in April, called for Gilroy’s 42 “exempt” managers to always earn 15 percent more than their subordinates and 10 percent more than the average pay given to their counterparts in nearby cities. The program added to the city budget $200,000 in costs, comprised of instant wage hikes ranging from a few hundred dollars annually for engineers to nearly $15,000 for the city clerk. While only half of city managers received wage increases in April, city administrators are now poised to ask for across-the-board raises to keep managers in step with pending raises for Gilroy’s 240-plus union workers.
“I have no doubt that Jay’s recommendation will be no raise,” said Councilman Dion Bracco said Wednesday, referring to the possibility of a raise in coming months for top managers.
Bracco initially opposed the pay range plan but ultimately voted for it, siding with arguments by City Administrator Jay Baksa that the policy is needed to help hire and retain top personnel. The plan was also needed, Baksa said, to improve morale in the police department, where some unionized sergeants earned more than captains, their non-union supervisors.
“I can’t see us having in front of us raise after raise after raise,” Bracco said. “We just took care of this. I would say I don’t want to see this for another year.”
Baksa said, however, that he “absolutely” plans to recommend a raise in coming weeks or months based on salary increases given to the city’s three unions.
“We’ve just gone through a very elaborate process to make this system right,” he said. “We don’t want to do things now to cause this problem to re-occur in the future.”
Firefighters and police will receive 3 percent raises as of July 1, and the city remains in labor talks with its biggest union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 101.
Baksa said administrators will await the outcome of labor talks with the last union before making a recommendation for manager pay increases.
The wage plan approved in April relies in part on the “best of the best” formula, which calls for city managers to receive the highest percentage raise afforded to any of the three unions. The wage recommendation for managers would not necessarily be pegged to the highest increase, Baksa said, but he stressed that an increase is necessary to preserve the integrity of the policy.
Councilman Craig Gartman called the plan his “worst nightmare come true.” At the time of approval, he called it a “pyramid scheme” that would lead to spiraling wage hikes. On Wednesday, he questioned the judgment of Baksa in the face of annual budget shortfalls of several million dollars.
“Just a month after giving them these huge raises, now he wants to give them raises again?” Gartman said. “Does (Baksa) think Christmas comes every month? What happened to fiscal responsibility? It sounds like he’s lost his mind and he’s giving away the candy store as he’s walking out the door.”
Baksa announced in recent weeks that he plans to retire at the end of the year after 24 years as city administrator. Though he did not receive a raise in April, his contract calls for him to receive any wage increases given to other exempt employees.
The final decision on wage increases rests with the seven-member city council. Any wage hike approved for city managers after July 1, the start of the fiscal year, would involve backpay for the intervening months, according to Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips.
Councilman Paul Correa would not say if he would approve or reject a wage proposal for managers so soon after approving a plan that inspired a stream of angry letters and phone calls from residents.
“It’s going to raise our eyebrows even more,” he said. “We’ll have to hear what’s going on from Jay, get some more answers and see what we should do.”
