FAYETTEVILLE — More than 700 city employees will get bigger paychecks beginning April 4 if aldermen approve 2014 raises next week.
Mayor Lioneld Jordan on Tuesday recommended increasing workers' wages by an average 3.8 percent. Pay for police officers and firefighters will automatically increase according to a fixed "step" system. Raises for other positions will be based on annual performance reviews.
Meeting Information
Fayetteville City Council
The Fayetteville City Council is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Room 219 of the City Administration Building, 113 W. Mountain St. On the agenda:
• A nearly 4 percent pay increase for more than 700 employees
• A resolution expressing the City Council's intent to sell a strip of land on the east side of a planned parking deck to the nonprofit group, Partners for Better Housing, for work force housing
• A set of ordinance changes aimed at promoting urban agriculture
• A plan to pave or reseal 8.2 miles of streets and build 6.1 miles of sidewalk in 2014
• A $406,000 contract with McGoodwin, Williams and Yates to design improvements to the city's Recycling and Trash Collection facility on Happy Hollow Road
• An $83,000 contract with Crafton Tull & Associates to design improvements to the Lake Fayetteville Softball Complex.
Source: Staff Report
The increases will also apply to longtime employees who are at the top of the pay range for their respective positions.
"We want to make sure we retain the brightest, most knowledgeable, longest-tenured (people) who have an institutional memory of the organization," Don Marr, the mayor's chief of staff, said Tuesday. "That's why I think it's important to have these service award considerations for those at the top of the range."
The pay plan will cost about $1.2 million, said Paul Becker, Fayetteville finance director.
It will be paid for using surplus money from the city's 2013 budget, he said.
Revenue in the city's general fund, which accounts for about 28 percent of Fayetteville's $135.6 million budget, came in $871,000 above expenses last year -- mostly due to better-than-expected sales tax growth. Becker said, in order to sustain the raises, year-end sales taxes figures will have to come in 3.6 percent higher than what was budgeted for 2014.
That may be difficult. According to this month's sales tax report, January tax collections from December sales were down about $128,000, or 4.4 percent, compared to what was forecast in the budget.
City officials expected to take in $2.89 million in the first month of the year, but only received $2.77 million.
"I would suspect that this may be weather related, seeing as how the other three largest cities in the area also did poorly," Becker said. "However, it's still down, and that's money we're going to have to make up.
"Jordan said Tuesday he was confident city officials would collect enough money by the end of the year to cover the raises he recommended.
"If we don't, then I will come back and I will make whatever cuts are necessary," he added.
To make ends meet amid plummeting sales tax collections in 2009, the Jordan administration dipped into the city's reserve fund, froze salaries, cut overtime and stopped filling positions that became available.
The City Council approved one-time $500 bonus checks for employees in 2011. Raises have averaged about 4 percent the past two years.
This year's pay plan, if approved, will apply to all "merit" employees who have worked for the city for at least six months. Police officers and firefighters will have to have worked at the city for at least one year to receive a raise.
The Washington County Quorum Court in November approved at least 3 percent raises for the county's roughly 600 full-time employees.
Employees who had worked for the county for less than two years saw a 3 percent bump, while employees with five or more years of experience got a 5 percent raise. Increases for those with between two and five years of experience got increases somewhere in between.
NW News on 02/26/2014