Part II of How To Get a 35% Salary Increase

Reference my post below (6/14/14) about the salary for the new Communications Manager (Public Information).  Here is some additional information, which now begs the questions of did the city manager exceed the authority or the intent of the council?  Read and decide for yourself. The point being that an amount equal to approximately 25% of salary has been the guideline for the value of benefits.  Fortunately, we have had full minutes restored for meetings, otherwise this info would not be readily available.  Some individuals (like Jeff Vaught) were against full minute restoration.  I wonder why?   


From the 5/21/2013 committee meeting:

CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Yes. And just to clarify on the Emergency Management position, because Terry is here and the position -- if we were to approve that position, we would actually just replacing the Records Clerk position that Terry would be vacating. So, that’s why that’s a lower number.

COUNCILMEMBER PFLUMM: Well, I was wondering, well, how do we get a public information person for 70 and an emergency management position for 45.
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Right. Right. That’s a net number of -- as actually more of a records clerk and then a little bit of additional funding for the creation of the position. Good question.
COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: But that includes all benefits, the retirement, the whole nine yards?
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: It does. And these are round numbers, so --
(then some other stuff)
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Well, which is probably ironic right now, because I -- when we talk about the salaries and how it goes like that, it gets so easy to get it kind of convoluted. So, can we go back to the two positions that you’re looking at in here, both the emergency manager position and the public information position?
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Uh-huh.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: You know, we kind of hear a lot of talk about them and so we’re talking about whether or not they include benefits. You’re telling us they do. So, can you give me a ballpark of what the actual salary that we would pay somebody for that is? Are you saying, I mean, is it about 25 percent less? Is that what your estimate is?
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Yeah. That would be my estimate. And again, I don’t know yet what kind of skills we’re going to need or what kind of person we’re going to get. You know, it might be that we have a classification position called regular part-time that 30 hours a week might be adequate if we found the right person that that’s the schedule that matched for them. So, I’ve tried to just plug a certain amount of money in there and hopefully you all -- there’s some flexibility and latitude within that, but.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: Right. I think it’s going -- it’s so easy I think when we see that number out there, you know, we get a lot of grief when we don’t include benefits, because then we say it’s not enough.
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Right. Right.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: But when you do include them, somebody goes --
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: No. It absolutely is intended to include benefits.
COUNCILMEMBER KUHN: -- $70,000 is a lot of money. So, we’re really talking about a $45,000 probably position plus benefits that go in, potentially in there.
CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Give or take, right.

From the 3/24/2014 City Council meeting:

COUNCILMEMBER MEYER: Yeah. Thank you. I don’t want to belabor the meeting certainly as it’s already ten o’clock. But I wondered -- I know Carol and I have had a number of conversations about kind of where the PIO position is, communications manager. I wondered if maybe we could get a high level kind of evolution of what it is just for everyone’s information, because we’ve had so many chats back and forth about it.

CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Yeah. And I included that in my updates e-mail. So, just a repeat of that pretty much?

COUNCILMEMBER MEYER: Yeah. That would be good.

CITY MANAGER GONZALES: As you all know we advertised and went through a selection process. We did not find a good fit. There were plenty of good candidates, good people, but not quite the right fit for us. So, we have re-advertised. We did re-brand the position as a communications manager thinking that might appeal more and describe more of what we were looking for. We did advertise the salary a little differently. Same salary range, but we pumped it up just to start it at 61, I think, which is within the same salary range. Again, hoping we get a different -- a few different people looking at it and then maybe get some good candidates that are a good fit for us. So, we are actually meeting tomorrow to review, and according to our Human Resources Manager Liz Crawford, we’ve got -- she thinks there’s several good folks and so we’ll move forward. I hope that we will find someone good for that. I think it’s an absolutely critical position for the City and I’m not willing to compromise on the quality of the person that we’re going to hire, because there’s good people out there and we need a good person. So, I’m hoping we’ll move forward soon.

MAYOR MEYERS: Mr. Sawyer.

COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: I have a question. So, we’ve opened it up to 61 with benefits, we’re going to be over the 70 mark, right?

CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Possibly. Again, I am open to, depending on what kind of candidate we get, we may get someone who wants a 30-hour work week. And if so, it would be a prorated amount. Again, as I said during the budget process, at that point we hadn’t even identified exactly what skill sets we’re looking for. And now we are more certain of those. So, it could go up, could go down. Just depends on what kind of person we get.

COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: But with benefits we’re -- all right. Sixty, whatever the salary is, we need to add 25 percent on it.

CITY MANAGER GONZALES: About. If we hired someone at the 61.

COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: All right. All right. Just so I know.

CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Uh-huh.

COUNCILMEMBER SAWYER: So, that, you know, we need to try to come in under, you know, at budget at least on something.

CITY MANAGER GONZALES: Well currently, and that number was budgeted for an annual and actually we have money budgeted in ‘13 for that position so, that we’ve never spent, and now we’re going to be April, end of April probably before we get someone on board. So, there is budget authority to cover that amount or even more. But that’s the target range that we’re looking at. And hopefully we’ll find the right person, good person with that pay range.






WARNING!!!!!! The City Manager of Shawnee has determined that local bloggers post items that may contain bad or misinformation. Please read these posts with care and determine for yourself whether the information is valid.