February is when Christmas comes for Fayetteville city employees. That's when a jolly, bearded man generously hands out gifts to those who have been good and those who have managed to survive another year.

No, it's not St. Nick. It's Mayor Lioneld Jordan, who for the third straight year wrapped up the year's shortest month by announcing a plan to give raises to his staff and rank-and-file employees.

This year, he's asked the City Council to spend $1.2 million for the pay increases. Last year, he got a pay increase of 2 percent in the 2013 budget, then followed up a couple of months later with a request for another 2 percent. The annual cost was around $2 million.

In 2012, his pay raise plan added ongoing costs of nearly $1 million to the annual city budget.

Jordan and his administrators say there's "no greater investment than our people." And Jordan wants to make sure city taxpayers invest.

For this year's largess, Jordan is betting on the come. According to his finance director, the city must see at least 3.6 percent more growth in sales tax collections than was originally budgeted for 2014 to afford the pay raises.

"If we don't, then I will come back and I will make whatever cuts are necessary," he said.

Jordan said he's confident that's going to happen.

Anyone who knows Jordan isn't surprised that putting more money into the hands of city employees remains among his top priorities, and taking care of good employees is important. He and the City Council have done it in recent years well beyond what many employees in the private sector have gotten during recent economically challenging times.

The last sales tax collection report for Fayetteville was a disappointment, a drop of 2.47 percent compared to the same month a year ago. Finance Director Paul Becker blamed that in part on bad weather. The three other bigger towns in the two-county area also saw declines. Fayetteville saw an increase in collections the month before, and Becker at the time predicted a healthy sales tax year for Fayetteville in 2014.

By committing to a 3.8 percent pay raise for city employees, Jordan and Co. better be right in their prognostications.

We remember candidate Jordan a few years back giving the incumbent what for when it came to spending beyond the city's revenue. The pay raise proposal for 2014 sounds like a situation Mayor Jordan really appreciates -- after all, who doesn't love a boss who gets them raises -- but candidate Jordan would have been critical of. Mayor Jordan has demonstrated candidate Jordan might have been viewing the world through electoral lenses.

His proposal still has to go through the City Council, which must be convinced the plan is economically feasible and the predictions for revenue growth are reasonable.

The last thing anyone should want are "whatever cuts are necessary" if the hole dug in 2014 turns out to be too deep.