City Council Looking to Fine Tune Proposed “Compensation Administrative Guide” for City Salaries

One week after a Danville City Council decision to table a vote on the proposed Compensation Administrative Guide for city salaries, a couple of different angles are being spoken on how much of an adjustment is needed.

The main issue provoking the tabling was whether exceptions to the guide would be decided by the mayor or the full council.  But during Tuesday evening’s (July 23rd) Public Services committee meeting, it was Vice-Mayor Tricia Teague and Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr that did most of the talking about what should be done next.  Vice-mayor Teague believes that in addition to making sure future city employees are paid competitively for the work they do, more protection should be provided to employees already with the city.  Teague says a proper multiplier is needed to avoid what could lead to some awkward situations.

(LEFT) Danville Vice-Mayor Tricia Teague.  (RIGHT) Danville Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr

AUDIO: It can definitely be done, but we must take care of our employees; especially the ones who have been here for a number of years, and were underpaid for a number of years.  They deserve compensation based on the years of service that they’ve given to the city.

Mayor Williams says that when working with a consultant on this the first time around, the approach was to set a minimum for each city position; but then after that keep it rather simple so as to not have so many different people dissatisfied about different things.  But as the mayor pointed out after Tuesday’s committee meeting, it seems that either way there was going to be disagreement.

AUDIO: There are always complaints that the previous study was unfair or biased; that there was too much influence from the administration.  So, we took a hands off approach, and did it strictly based on comparing jobs to jobs, based on job descriptions, to get people to a minimum starting point.  But there’s still more room for improvement.

The next step now seems to be for city administration to go back to the consultant, and see how much more fine tuning can be done to the proposed Compensation Administrative Guide for City of Danville salaries.