Pittsfield Councilors Still Unsure About Staff Raises
 The ordinance committee for the second time discussed staff raises without coming to a consensus. |
The committee tabled the issue for a second time following a lengthy hearing which offered little consensus, other than a desire to vote on components of the plan individually. As in a previous 2 1/2 hour session a month ago, councilors expressed inconclusive positions and said more information was needed to make a decision.
"Moving forward, we're probably going to approve this, in my opinion," said Council President Melissa Mazzeo, "Just not the way it looks right now."
The proposal from Mayor Daniel Bianchi seeks to amend the city code to implement recommendations from a study by Stone Consulting. The revision would include a reclassification of pay increases to a more merit-based system and include 5 percent raises for about 50 city employees who have gone largely without increases for more than a decade.
"It's a big leap," said Bianchi. "The reason that it's a lot of money is that it hasn't been addressed in decades,"
"I'm really struggling with this," said Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi, citing concerns about the increased costs of pensions.
Councilor Kathleen Amuso also voiced opposition to the extent of salary increases, and to making them retroactive for the upper echelon department heads, but along with Councilor Jonathan Lothrop voiced support for retroactive raises for some of the "Exempt," non-management positions, including various administrative positions within Community Development and other departments.
Lothrop described the idea of the making the larger raises for department heads retroactive to 2013 "very unpopular" with the public.
Mazzeo agreed that something needed to be done to reform the pay scales, which data from the study says are below average for municipal jobs, even adjusted for a lower regional cost of living.
"Some of the conversations I don't feel comfortable having right now, because some of them may be job-specific," Mazzeo told Bianchi.
"Once again, we seem to be in a sand trap," said Bianchi, who said he was amenable to hearing any suggestions for revising the proposal, but was not hearing any clear recommendations from the committee.
Bianchi suggested if some councilors may wish to meet individually with a working group including himself, the personnel director and consultant to get further information and make suggestions.
After considerable uncertainty and discussion as to how to proceed, the committee suggested the mayor re-submit the proposed reclassifications and raises for management-level employees separately from the exempt list, and Mazzeo agreed to convene with the mayor's working group in the near future. The committee then tabled the current ordinance amendment.
Ordinance Amending the City Code of Pittsfield, Chapter 16, Personnel
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Tags: ordinance & rules , raises, salaries,
