Study Recommends City Pay Increases

— The level of raises for city employees to be recommended by Mayor Doug Sprouse will come from a compensation study.

A Johanson Group study recommended pay increases ranging from 4 percent to 8 percent. Springdale’s pay scale fell behind other cities in the area during rough times, Sprouse said. The city’s sales tax collection fell for three years before leveling off.

“I plan to propose to the council a budget based on the study,” Sprouse said. “It is important for us to be able to pay competitive salaries.”

The study compared positions to similar ones in Bentonville, Fayetteville and Rogers, according to a summary from the Johanson Group. The group is a private management services company. A wage and benefit study from the Northwest Arkansas Human Resources Association and a state Department of Labor study were also used.

“We’ll be glad to look at the study and look at the reasons for increases,” said Bobby Stout, chairman of the council’s Finance Committee. “We’ll have to see where the money would come from.”

The 2012 budget authorized 511 positions in the city, said Wyman Morgan, city director of administration and financial services. Some of the positions are part-time.

No pay increase is proposed for five positions above the recommended pay range. Those five might get a bonus this year, Morgan said.

The city has 242 police officers and firefighters who are civil service employees, and 217 full-time employees who don’t fall under civil service, he said.

Discipline and promotion procedures for civil service employees fall under the city Civil Service Commission. Appeals on discipline and promotion for non-civil-service employees go to the council.

The study recommended increasing civil service pay by 6 percent.

Dean Bitner with the Springdale Firefighters Association said he was expecting a higher figure.

“We’re still trying to digest this,” Bitner said. “Bentonville and Rogers are still miles ahead of us and that’s the fire departments that are closest to what we do.”

The non-civil-service positions were more complicated, Morgan said.

“Our supervisors were further behind than our lower level employees,” Morgan said. “We had to create a sliding scale to adjust the pay.”

The scale would range from 4.85 percent to 8.01 percent.

The salary adjustments would not include any additional raises, Morgan said, such as cost of living.

“We have been running lean for several years,” Sprouse said. “I think it’s time to make some adjustments and compete with the market for our employees.”

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