[0:14] um

[0:28] yes

[1:26] okay we will bring to order the special meeting of the city council of nisswa

[1:31] for thursday april 15th thank you all for coming the reason for

[1:36] the meeting tonight is the 2021 compensation study the

[1:40] results [Music]

[1:42] that we received from ann i'm not going to attempt the last name

[1:47] from baker tilly first item memo from jenny that she sent out

[1:53] do you want to go over that jenny or what

[1:56] no good evening um city council i think if you want to

[2:00] start off with ann and her presentation that works

[2:03] so we will turn it over to ann and i will put her powerpoint up here

[2:13] and we've got it up on the screen and if you just want to go through the slides i

[2:17] will [Music]

[2:19] i will forward them when you're which one when you're ready

[2:24] okay sounds good um good evening uh mayor members of the city council um

[2:29] thanks for uh inviting me to this presentation this evening

[2:33] to talk about the compensation study that

[2:36] speaker tilly has conducted for the city of nisswa

[2:41] most of the things in this presentation are also in the report

[2:45] that has been shared with you as well so this will be a pretty brief

[2:50] presentation um at any time uh feel free to ask any

[2:54] questions that you might have about any of of the components for this so

[2:59] jenny if you want to flip ahead to the objectives slide yep

[3:05] okay great so the objectives that were identified by the city for doing this

[3:11] study we did a comprehensive study for the

[3:14] city back in 2016 and that was a full scope study where we

[3:20] reviewed job descriptions we developed a new

[3:24] job evaluation system to review internal equity

[3:28] of all positions within the city we conducted a very comprehensive

[3:33] wage and benefit survey at that time to determine where the city was relative

[3:39] to market and then used that internal

[3:43] relationships and the market data and developed

[3:46] new compensation plans for for the city at that time

[3:50] and then also developed implementation options so what

[3:53] impact the study recommendations would have

[3:57] on individual employees so it's been a period of time since that last study was

[4:02] conducted uh industry standards uh call for

[4:07] comprehensive studies about every five to seven years

[4:11] so you're right at that five year mark and over the last several years the

[4:15] market has been rapidly changing so it really is a good time to

[4:21] you know take a look at where your salaries were so

[4:24] what the city identified was doing a review and a evaluation of the

[4:29] the current classification and compensation system

[4:32] and a goal of that was to determine what is the current relationship

[4:37] of the city's wage ranges to the market you know over the last several years the

[4:43] the city has been updating your compensation structure

[4:47] you have been making adjustments for employee wages within that structure

[4:52] but where you know were they keeping up with your market comparables that were

[4:57] identified in the last study and then looking at evaluating internal

[5:02] rankings of positions as necessary so if we were to identify

[5:07] any positions that needed review as far as any changes that had occurred

[5:14] since the last time the position was looked at

[5:17] whether there were any red flags as to where the position lined up relative to

[5:21] market did we need to look at review and we

[5:24] really you know only had a couple of positions that really have

[5:28] undergone changes um and some underwent changes while we were going through the

[5:32] process of the study and those changes are reflected in

[5:38] an updated evaluation and then looking at you know looking at updating

[5:45] the the compensation system and strategy for the city

[5:48] we have not completed that process yet because we're

[5:52] we want to get some direction and some thoughts from

[5:55] the city council as to how you would like to use the information we're

[6:00] bringing to you this evening for making any adjustments to the

[6:04] compensation program for the city and then based on that

[6:09] feedback if there are changes that are made to

[6:12] that compensation system we will then also develop those

[6:16] implementation options and strategies for making any of

[6:21] those changes so next slide please jenny

[6:28] so the meth the methodology that we used for this study

[6:33] i had some conversations with your with your city administrator to

[6:38] talk about some of the issues and concerns

[6:41] that the city had for moving forward with this study

[6:46] we had discussions about the the survey group

[6:49] and did we should we keep the same group of organizations that was included in

[6:54] the last study or did we look at making any changes

[6:57] um so just some of that background information as we forged ahead

[7:02] with collecting information we then obtained market salary information which

[7:08] we're bringing to you for review this evening

[7:12] and then of course the next steps then would be updating the compensation plan

[7:18] if necessary based on the feedback from the members of the city council

[7:23] reviewing that assignment of positions within that compensation plan so do

[7:29] any of those positions need to move from where they are currently assigned

[7:34] based on changes in positions based on current market conditions for those

[7:39] positions and then again that development of

[7:42] implementation options if necessary

[7:47] next slide please jenny okay so um on this next slide and these are

[7:53] also included in the the study summary that you have been

[7:57] provided and uh with conversations with with jenny we

[8:02] we determined that we would use the same cities that

[8:06] were used during the last study because that was something that had been

[8:10] accepted by the city council at that time as organizations that were

[8:15] deemed comparable to the city of nisswa and we when we look at organizations

[8:21] that are comparable we use several different

[8:23] factors to make those determinations and those

[8:28] factors include size of the organization

[8:33] and not just population but service area it looks at geographic locations so who

[8:40] are your neighbors it looks at organizational structure so

[8:44] who's providing the same level and types of services that you are

[8:49] we look at demographic information you know such as you know the city of nisswa

[8:54] you know in the summer you get a large influx

[8:58] of tourists that come through uh your city

[9:01] um and so that makes you a little bit unique in comparison to other cities

[9:06] uh and then also competition for employees so there were a lot of

[9:10] different factors that that went into selection of these

[9:14] organizations uh we did uh we were able to obtain

[9:18] information from the majority of of these cities which is great but when

[9:24] we look at the market survey data you'll

[9:27] see that we don't have that large number of

[9:30] responses for every position because not every position will be a direct

[9:35] match in the other organizations plus you have liquor operations

[9:42] and a bar restaurant and that's something that is fairly unique that we

[9:47] don't find in a lot of other organizations so they will have fewer

[9:51] responses for those types of positions

[9:56] next slide please jenny

[10:00] all right in our salary survey and there's

[10:04] summary of this information in the the study summary that that i've

[10:10] provided you and then i know in your packet city

[10:14] administrator has provided some variations of the

[10:18] comparisons based on the different groups of

[10:21] positions that you have within the city but in that salary survey we included 24

[10:27] positions so we started out with with all

[10:30] positions to see what kind of information we could collect on those

[10:34] positions in the final analysis we used 16

[10:40] we eliminated some of those from the analysis just because of

[10:44] lack of responses so for some of those positions we didn't get any

[10:49] information or one or two responses and we made a determination that

[10:54] anything with less than seven responses we weren't going to use because it

[10:58] wasn't enough information to draw conclusions about

[11:02] the market rate for that position so when we looked at

[11:07] at the wages what we compared is salary ranges

[11:11] so we looked at your starting pay your mid pay

[11:14] and the top pay that was available for each position

[11:19] and when we looked at those on average your salary ranges are

[11:24] below market so when we included those 16 positions

[11:28] your starting salaries are just over 6 below market and your midpoint and

[11:34] maximum salaries are just under 7 below market and that's on average you

[11:40] do have some positions that are more consistent and comparable to

[11:45] market and others that are further away from

[11:48] market and then we did a look at um you know

[11:52] comparing those wages excluding the police officer

[11:58] and the sergeant position because those are two positions that are

[12:03] fairly significantly below market averages so we wanted to see

[12:07] you know what impact that had on the overall picture of the

[12:11] of the rest of the positions and so you know these are a little bit closer to

[12:16] the market so excluding those two positions your

[12:19] minimum salaries are a little under five percent below market

[12:24] midpoint salaries just under six and your maximum salaries are six percent

[12:29] below average and again that complete data is in your pack and it's also

[12:35] uh in appendix one of the summary report

[12:42] so next slide please okay and then this is just a refresher

[12:49] as a part of the compensation plan we use job evaluation to determine

[12:56] along with market as to where positions fit within

[13:00] the compensation structure that you currently have in existence

[13:04] and any modifications to that that we may move forward with

[13:09] a job evaluation just as a refresher or for those of you who weren't on the city

[13:13] council when we did the last study job evaluation is a requirement

[13:19] of the state of minnesota under their local government pay equity act

[13:24] but is also a very common compensation practice

[13:28] in both public and private sector industries

[13:31] worldwide and it's the tool that organizations use

[13:35] to make sure that positions are lined up appropriately

[13:40] uh with other positions within the organization

[13:43] so that you have equitable compensation amongst positions that have

[13:48] similar levels of job responsibilities similar levels of job requirements

[13:54] so what we used was the safe job evaluation system

[13:58] which is a very comprehensive job evaluation system

[14:02] there are nine job factors that go into that evaluation system

[14:06] which gives us the ability to compare seemingly very different

[14:10] jobs to one another within the organization so it allows us to evaluate

[14:16] you know a liquor store clerk to a bartender to a police officer

[14:21] to somebody in planning to your city administrator

[14:24] so it gives us that ability and so it's a very comprehensive system

[14:29] and i can go into more detail of that if you you would like

[14:36] when we go over the report next slide so pay philosophy and we

[14:44] discussed this back in the 2016 study of pay philosophy for the city of

[14:49] nisswa and what the goal was was to provide

[14:54] fair and equitable compensation to all positions and employees within the city

[15:01] across all of the different service areas which the city provides

[15:06] balancing the external market with internal equity

[15:09] so making sure that we were establishing a competitive

[15:14] compensation program but also making sure that positions were consistent with

[15:18] one another within the organization having a competitive pay structure but

[15:24] also taking into consideration what the city has

[15:27] available for financial resources not only

[15:30] for implementing a system but also for sustaining and maintaining that

[15:36] system moving forward and then making sure it's understandable

[15:40] for all stakeholders employees supervisors administrators

[15:45] the elected officials and also uh the citizens of

[15:49] of the city as well

[15:53] next slide please okay so as far as recommendations um we don't have

[16:00] specific recommendations for for the council tonight we want to get

[16:04] some direction and feel for how the city council would like

[16:08] to move forward with this information but what we would recommend is

[16:12] considering adjustments to your overall pay plan so it is more

[16:17] competitive and consistent with the organizations

[16:21] that have been selected by the city as your market comparison group

[16:27] based on the factors that i discussed a little bit earlier

[16:30] and then also consider maybe some additional adjustments

[16:35] or splitting out the police officer and police sergeant positions

[16:40] based on the the large difference that there is between their current salary

[16:45] ranges and the market data and you'll see that

[16:48] in in the survey summary that we have provided to you

[16:56] so next slide and then system administration and the

[17:01] city has been doing this but just to kind of reiterate

[17:04] um moving forward based on the recommendations and the decisions

[17:11] that the city council makes for moving forward just

[17:15] making sure that there's ongoing support for administration of the system

[17:20] moving forward to assist you in maintaining that relationship to market

[17:26] assist you in maintaining internal equity for all positions

[17:31] so that looks at base adjustments adjusting pay ranges adjusting the wages

[17:36] for individual employees and then we always throw in you know

[17:42] making sure that there's a performance component for employee

[17:46] movement within the range so moving from step to step based on

[17:50] satisfactory performance

[17:55] and then next slide so looking at the goal

[18:02] of this project and and of the city's compensation

[18:06] program that was established back in 2016

[18:10] of providing fair and equitable compensation to employees

[18:14] and it is a very competitive these days and changing labor market

[18:20] especially in certain areas public safety technical positions

[18:27] you know we're finding basically across the board

[18:30] in in public sector organizations it's getting more and more difficult to

[18:35] recruit employees into those types of positions there's

[18:39] fewer qualified workers going into some of those areas that we find in local

[18:43] government and again internal equity and market

[18:48] competitiveness being fiscally responsible with public

[18:52] resources because we all know that it's the taxpayers that provide the funding

[18:57] to pay city salaries for the services that they

[19:00] are provided by the city of nisswa and then consistent

[19:05] administration of pay policies and procedures

[19:08] across all city departments

[19:14] and at that we can it'll open it up for questions or jump into the report

[19:18] and look at some of the specific survey information

[19:23] however you would like to proceed

[19:29] does anyone have a question for anne at this time

[19:32] yeah don go ahead and just a general question about

[19:39] five years ago we we did a very thorough study

[19:43] as you have noted and we made corrections at that point of

[19:47] in the neighborhood of about fifty thousand dollars

[19:50] in round numbers since that time we've had people

[19:55] go through different steps we've had cost of living increases and etc

[20:02] over the last five years now we do the study that's just come out

[20:08] and we find instead of 50 000 behind we're

[20:12] over a hundred thousand behind what are we doing wrong

[20:19] well it's not that you're doing anything wrong it's just that the market has been

[20:23] changing that rapidly over the last few years

[20:27] uh just because of the difficulty of being able to hire and retain

[20:34] employees especially in certain types of positions

[20:38] that it's just kind of that snowball effect of

[20:42] you know this organization has trouble so they

[20:45] increase their wages and then the neighbor

[20:49] then says well you're stealing my employees so now i need to

[20:53] increase my wage schedule and it just it filters kind of

[20:57] through the area and it's not just you that you know there's all sorts of

[21:02] organizations that have they've adopted pay plans they have been

[21:06] maintaining those pay plans and they're still finding that that

[21:11] they're falling behind market they're having difficulty recruiting

[21:15] qualified employees in positions and it's

[21:18] you know it's difficulty recruiting it's the current market

[21:22] and it is the lack of available workers in a lot of areas in public sector

[21:31] and does it include do you um include like insurance and

[21:36] that sort of compensation in the study we did we did not do a total

[21:41] compensation review

[21:46] and do most of the cities do the supervisors are they salaried or hourly

[21:52] um i would have to go back to the specific data

[21:56] but most supervisors um if they're true supervisors

[22:02] depart department heads most of those are

[22:06] salaried employees okay so we're comparing against salaried employees

[22:12] correct okay thank you for the for the most for the most part

[22:16] and and it can it can vary there are some organizations that are

[22:20] smaller in size that that even though those employees

[22:25] qualify as being salaried they will still provide them overtime

[22:31] just to ensure that the employees that they supervise

[22:35] are not making more than the supervisors are

[22:41] and if i can i'm just going to piggyback off don's question because he stole

[22:45] mine but this might be part this might be for the next part of the

[22:51] study if so just let me know but we adjusted like don

[22:55] said for cost of living every year um and and we're farther behind we

[23:02] we wanted to stay in the middle of this of the steps or not the steps but the

[23:08] pay ranges we wanted to we we shot for staying in the middle that's what we

[23:12] took on the last time we had a low option a middle option and a high option

[23:16] we took the middle option how do we keep track of the market then

[23:21] on the is it something we have to do yearly then because or do you just have

[23:26] to go cost of living plus

[23:30] a little more or well there are a lot of organizations that

[23:36] that do a check-in annually and

[23:40] what that check-in usually entails is you've got you've established your

[23:46] market group and so what it entails is reaching out to those

[23:50] and just saying okay for 2022 what adjustments are you making to your

[23:57] pay scale and what adjustments are you making to

[24:00] individual employees then you can look at what those

[24:05] organizations are doing and you can say well we were planning on

[24:09] two percent but it looks like our survey group is

[24:12] is going two and a half percent then you get that idea of okay

[24:19] we should be doing two and a half percent is it within our financial

[24:22] resources to do the two and a half percent

[24:25] uh if not how close can we get to that so you don't

[24:29] keep falling um behind market so that's a way to kind of keep in touch

[24:36] with with what is going on so you're not going you know

[24:40] way above and you're not lagging behind

[24:47] yeah um i was wondering about the the data

[24:50] um when you ask for salary are we asking where do you get that data

[24:58] from are you asking the people directly or is there like a general

[25:04] information it's a common it's a combination of factors of getting it

[25:08] um in general and also using information from the the league of

[25:14] minnesota city survey um so some of the organizations are very

[25:21] good about keeping that data up to date some of them don't respond to it at all

[25:28] so we you know made contacts for pay plans from other organizations

[25:33] we used league data when it was available so we aren't pestering

[25:37] organizations if we don't need to so it's a variety of

[25:41] factors with which we get the information so when

[25:47] you say a city administrator for example are the job descriptions from one city

[25:53] administrator to another city administrator the same or different or

[25:57] are they unified basically they're fairly consistent

[26:01] you know there's going to be a little bit of difference because

[26:04] every community is unique but most city administrator positions are

[26:10] going to be fairly consistent is that because of the league of

[26:14] minnesota cities they helped to define what a city administrator is or is that

[26:20] everything the the league doesn't but there is

[26:24] you know legislation that talks about you know if you're this type of city

[26:29] you know you have these responsibilities and if you're this type of city you have

[26:32] these um but you know the league does provide

[26:36] assistance and they do show you know kind of what

[26:39] is a summary of a of a city administrator for example

[26:46] and i noticed in one other thing in the survey results that you gave

[26:50] you mention in there for comparison purposes that industry standards say

[26:54] that a relationship to the market is within

[26:57] plus or minus five percent if it's within that range then it's

[27:01] basically comparable to the market it's it's industry standards say plus or

[27:07] minus five percent is considered um comparable to the

[27:11] market uh unless uh an organization deems

[27:15] a different type of relationship for example i've worked for communities

[27:21] before where based on what their market group is

[27:26] for example a small city on the fringe of the twin cities

[27:33] metro area which might be next door to a lakeville

[27:38] or an eagan or those types of things their market is a little bit different

[27:44] just because of where that is so they may say

[27:48] that because this is our market area uh we're going to be at 90 percent of

[27:55] market because obviously we can't pay what a lakeville or an eagan is

[28:02] compensating their their employees i've had other

[28:06] organizations um and this is a this is a

[28:12] metro community that because their philosophy

[28:17] is we want to be able to hire and retain the best of the best that their pay

[28:23] philosophy is to be at the 75th percentile of the

[28:27] market so they want to be significantly above so the five percent is a guideline

[28:34] for your comparison most organizations that we do work for want

[28:40] to be pretty close to average if

[28:45] their market group is a group that's fairly consistent with

[28:48] their community

[28:53] thank you

[29:01] and you mentioned i i believe that you're just comparing salaries

[29:05] in this study we did in this study we just did salaries

[29:10] okay we did a very comprehensive we did a very comprehensive review of

[29:16] fringe benefits when we did the last study so we just looked at

[29:22] doing just comparing the wages because we did

[29:25] that comprehensive review um you know within the last five years

[29:31] and benefits are not they don't change greatly

[29:35] from year to year so that was going to be my

[29:40] point that you're just with salary it doesn't include benefits

[29:44] which can be another what 20 25 of the salary it can be but

[29:51] in in most public sector organizations benefits when we do that

[29:58] in-depth review there's not a great discrepancy between

[30:03] the benefits as a whole between communities you might find you

[30:09] know this organization gives a little bit more vacation

[30:14] um this one gives a different holiday this one might pick up a little bit

[30:20] bigger percentage of insurance however insurance has gotten extremely

[30:26] difficult to compare just because there are so many different

[30:30] plans and options that are out there

[30:35] but there's not a huge difference in public sector

[30:40] across different cities for benefits that are offered

[30:52] one question i had and then we i'll let you get on with what you're doing

[30:56] um when you mentioned the thing the one part about

[31:00] in your presentation about um performance and i noticed on the reading

[31:07] this there was some mentions about performance at different places

[31:11] mainly uh it would have been in the compensation philosophy portion of your

[31:16] um does that pay for performance or is that different than performance

[31:24] that is different than performance pay for performance is usually

[31:28] a a separate type of payment that is either

[31:32] outside of the the regular pay plan or it's an organization that

[31:40] designs an open range system rather than a step system so

[31:46] employees can get different types of increases based on their level of

[31:52] performance in performance in this aspect

[31:57] is really looking at okay for employees to move through the pay

[32:03] range from step to step they should be

[32:07] performing at a satisfactory increase a satisfactory level to receive

[32:14] a step increase within the organization

[32:20] thank you you're welcome

[32:32] i have no more questions does anyone else have a question

[32:35] i'm just wondering uh we've had some employees

[32:39] over the past several years leave i just wonder how many of those that did

[32:44] leave was it because of a better salary someplace else or other

[32:49] reasons practically how many have we lost

[32:53] because of salary any idea that's hard to say

[33:01] i also wonder if we've ever done exit interviews of course the employee

[33:07] has to agree to want to do an exit interview

[33:09] but you know we started doing that over the past

[33:12] couple years okay of the ones that have exited has it been paid

[33:18] not off the top of my head but that's i haven't i mean i'd have to go back and

[33:22] look i think it's just opera i mean it's

[33:24] opportunity whatever they might have had you know which is

[33:27] obviously then pay is a part of that correct but it's not just

[33:31] the only you know it's the professional growth excuse me professional growth

[33:36] opportunity that kind of thing and i know we've lost one employee because of

[33:40] personal stuff he just worked better for him to be elsewhere

[33:44] so that's fine i mean you can't do anything with that

[33:51] did you want ant it's not it's not always about it's not always about

[33:55] it's not always about the level of pay um

[33:58] you know typically when you're looking at your pay plan it's something that you

[34:02] want to design that gives you a starting wage that allows you to

[34:06] recruit employees as they have vacancies and then a top pay that is you know

[34:12] within competitive within your area but there's all sorts of reasons that

[34:16] employees leave

[34:25] um i i'm sure ann could um you know walk us through any of the spreadsheets if

[34:29] you have specific questions it seems like the council has a general feel for

[34:35] the information that was provided i'll just note that

[34:39] i provided you some other options as far as looking at the data from different

[34:43] perspectives as we have enterprise funds potentially

[34:47] you'd want to look at those separately from the general fund

[34:51] as she mentioned uh we we pulled out the the teamsters group

[34:55] to look at that separately so i i believe there are six

[34:59] options certainly there's other ways to look at it as well

[35:02] but i provided that just for your information and kind of

[35:06] seeing things from a few different perspectives um

[35:09] i also um asked anna question um that might be helpful as far as um

[35:16] consistency um at the at the different levels as far as we're

[35:23] consistent at least in where we've landed with

[35:27] respect to market which i think in a way is positive whereas you

[35:31] could you could see potentially where maybe our low salaries

[35:36] are really out of whack differently than our

[35:39] high salaries and then you have kind of another

[35:41] layer of issues i'll say where their starting salaries could you know what if

[35:46] those were 10 above markets but then you get to the

[35:49] high point and we're six percent below so you'd have to make other adjustments

[35:53] there as well um so it's it seemed like when i saw

[35:57] that i said well that's a positive that we're consistent in that

[36:01] way so that we're not looking at i think

[36:04] structurally major changes it's just how do we adjust

[36:09] the the number itself does that make sense

[36:13] hopefully i explained that well enough and but that just that was something

[36:17] yeah yeah no that's that's that's great and that you're exactly right

[36:21] it's consistent because sometimes we'll go into organizations and we do find

[36:27] that you know maybe their starting salaries are

[36:30] are significantly below and their top salaries are more competitive and

[36:35] and vice versa but you're just consistent across your pay

[36:40] plan so rather than you know looking at restructuring the paid plan

[36:45] you know it really is a matter of do you want to make any adjustments to be

[36:50] closer to the market and then it's just an all across the board adjustment you

[36:56] know the only exception is is and this is we're seeing this

[37:01] all across the country is is the public safety positions

[37:06] um just because it has gotten increasingly

[37:10] difficult to find qualified employees to fill those positions

[37:15] and there are organizations you know that will

[37:18] steal any good employee that they can from their next door neighbor

[37:24] just to to fill a vacancy if it's a good employee

[37:28] so that's not anything that was a surprise to me

[37:32] as we looked at this because i see it in every state where i do these studies

[37:38] so what that's essentially saying is is our play our play our pay plan is

[37:45] working the way we have it set up it's just

[37:49] adjusting to market essentially

[37:53] correct correct

[37:56] yeah because those when i started looking at public safety those were the

[38:01] that was the biggest area that jumped out to me

[38:04] and i don't want to lose the officers that we have you know

[38:12] they're doing a good job in my opinion and and i would hate to see them go

[38:17] i'm not saying they would but but that was the biggest concern for me

[38:23] after looking at everything

[38:31] yeah and and it's not that unusual to have those public safety positions

[38:38] sometimes pulled out into a separate pay plan

[38:42] just because their structures are sometimes different and where they align

[38:46] with market is sometimes different so it's not that unusual

[38:50] to to do that right but i mean if if i look at nisswa um

[38:57] you know in the winter time you're dealing with 2 000 residents

[39:02] but then in the in the uh peak season you're dealing with large city

[39:08] populations and i you know so i mean yeah that

[39:13] that was just my big concern at that one so

[39:16] yeah i mean because you have to exactly yeah because public safety they you know

[39:22] they have to know how to react to that 2000 population and then

[39:27] all of a sudden boom here you go with you know a large city population

[39:33] yeah and that makes nisswa you know fairly unique

[39:37] you know there are other organizations there are other cities that are

[39:40] similarly situated but there's many many of them that don't

[39:45] have to deal with that issue you know it's pretty consistent year-round as to

[39:49] the issues that they deal with and it's not just your if not just your

[39:54] public safety you know you think about what happens in your bar

[39:58] in your liquor store and and in other areas as well

[40:03] correct cyan if i'm you know taking what i've read in the

[40:08] memos and things that i've yet we got from you

[40:11] so let's just i'm just gonna pull one out

[40:14] and it's nine it's a position that's nine point seven two percent

[40:18] under there's another one that's um twenty percent and another

[40:23] 979 for example five percent plus or minus is considered

[40:31] um okay for lack of a better word nine five five percent of the of my

[40:37] comparables if i'm within five percent i'm within the ballpark of where i

[40:43] should be so let i'm gonna fix this so let's say

[40:47] that okay i bring them up for i just bring

[40:50] them up to that five or say four percent within four

[40:53] percent is that a mistake for on our part to do

[40:57] that to just bring everybody close to the five percent say what

[41:01] mistake am i making and what am i setting myself up for

[41:07] are we going to be right back here again next year type thing

[41:11] you you could be um just because it brings it just to the five percent

[41:18] and you're going to have some organizations that are going to say we

[41:21] want to be at average okay for example i did a

[41:26] i did this similar project for another city uh last last fall

[41:32] and they were looking at implementing on the first of the year

[41:37] and they were about the same about the same relationship that you are

[41:43] to market and what they did is they adjusted

[41:49] their pay scale by four percent for a market adjustment and then

[41:54] they adjusted it another 2.5

[41:58] for a cost of living adjustment so for 2021 they did a

[42:03] 6.5 adjustment in their pay plan to get them closer to market

[42:10] so that was going to bring them on average

[42:14] um about one and a half percent within about one

[42:19] and a half percent of market average okay and they did that across the board

[42:27] they did they did you know the one thing in minnesota with pay equity

[42:33] um to to to save for this position i'm going to adjust it four percent and for

[42:39] this position i'm going to adjust it six percent and for this position i'm

[42:43] going to adjust it two percent um then you face the very

[42:49] real probability that you will not maintain compliance with pay equity and

[42:57] then if you are out of compliance with pay equity

[43:00] then you need to make adjustments to get into compliance and

[43:05] if you don't make those adjustments then you face fines from the state

[43:10] i just done on monday night i just met with

[43:13] another city's city council to propose an update to their pay plan

[43:20] we had done um developed a pay plan for them back in

[43:25] 2017 and the city council chose to

[43:30] not follow it in its entirety and made adjustments based on

[43:37] you know performance of employees and based on perceived market for certain

[43:43] positions uh and they were found out of compliance

[43:48] by the state and so now they're having to you know

[43:52] make adjustments and increases to employee wages and

[43:56] revamp the pay plan so that they can achieve compliance with pay equity

[44:01] so especially for a city of your size i would strongly recommend that you

[44:09] don't do it position by position adjustment

[44:14] otherwise we'll be back here again next time you have to file up the equity

[44:17] report

[44:21] um also i noticed that um the data the data that we used here you have in

[44:28] here uh europe um did a market survey update

[44:31] to the winner of 2021. it's actually 2020 right

[44:37] so no 2021 in the winter of 2021

[44:46] yeah we collected the data this winter yeah we started

[44:49] we started after the new council right so it was 21

[44:52] january february winner yeah oh january okay i see so then uh the data that has

[44:59] actually used does that include the uh cost of the living increase that

[45:05] in our data that we gave yes

[45:10] the cost increases included yep okay and then

[45:17] and all the data that we got from them uh

[45:21] from the league the minnesota city league um

[45:24] was also 221 or with the increase some of it was 2021 some of it was 2020

[45:31] but we aged that data okay so we're in compliance as we sit

[45:37] now this is or not yes

[45:46] guess what we're in compliance i mean we're in compliance now yes

[45:50] if we you would be in compliance with pay equity based on your last pay equity

[45:55] report yes so if if we chose not to do

[46:00] anything and and the market continues that's where

[46:04] then we'll fall out of compliance and not maybe

[46:08] uh compliance doesn't compliance has nothing to do with

[46:13] markets compliance is just looking at internal

[46:17] equity the equity okay okay yeah that's looking

[46:20] at internal equity so so yeah yep no that

[46:26] answers that question it's yeah i just got confused on two for a second

[46:36] okay

[46:39] jennifer what do you need from us well what are you looking for

[46:43] does the council have any more questions first

[46:46] or we don't know yet no do we want to open it up to employees

[46:50] so we at this point and um we wanted to open it up to staff that's here

[46:54] to ask questions okay okay so if there's any staff that has a question please

[47:00] come on up and ask you can ask anne um directly or any of them you can ask me

[47:06] but pass it on to jenny and anne anyway

[47:12] so if there's anyone that has a question they want to ask about the study

[47:15] or what they have or anything at this point

[47:21] nobody okay okay

[47:27] do you have anything you wanted to go jenny um i don't have anything

[47:30] additional as far as information i think now we're

[47:33] at that point of discussion where we want to try to make a plan for how

[47:38] we will work through making decisions getting more feedback you know you know

[47:43] any of those things so that's that's kind of where we're i think we're

[47:47] at well i mean here's the thing is

[47:52] you know there's

[47:56] hiring employees and training them is expensive

[47:59] and it takes time okay and that preferably

[48:04] you want to keep your employees and what we've been doing the last few years it

[48:08] seems like is every time somebody we have a good

[48:10] employee that's going to leave we have to either quickly figure out how

[48:15] we're going to keep that person here and we're scramble at the last minute

[48:20] thing versus um you know it's and that may be

[48:24] inevitable that might be something we end up having to do depending what the

[48:28] position is i don't know but it seems to me

[48:31] that you know we wanted to stay in the middle

[48:35] of and again we're in compliance um but we want to stay in the middle and

[48:41] some of these some of the neighbors if you will are spending more money on

[48:45] certain areas than we are and so poof there goes your your employee that

[48:52] you just got done training in um i do know that some of the employees

[48:57] have said you know they don't want to leave

[49:00] i know people some have said that they want to stay here because they like the

[49:03] area they like being here let's face it it's

[49:06] better than the alternatives in some areas

[49:08] at this point but you got to be able to live here too

[49:14] so um you know we wanted to stay in the middle

[49:19] and ross and don you were there so correct me if i'm wrong with that but

[49:22] our goal was to kind of stay in the middle of the pay scale so we're always

[49:26] in compliance um but being in compliance doesn't seem

[49:31] to be our problem [Laughter]

[49:33] and i it seems that it's just our name is it just is that a fair thing to say

[49:38] our neighbors are just outspending us that would be correct okay yeah but we

[49:44] still want to stay in but we don't want to fall out of

[49:47] compliance and have to play catch up with the neighbor

[49:51] all in the same year so you know i mean i want one suggestion

[49:57] i would have is um you know that

[50:02] maybe we moved from here to the personnel committee and the personnel

[50:05] committee could schedule times or the or we could have

[50:09] workshops with the employees and figure out what the employees really

[50:14] want to have is it money is it benefits is it

[50:18] um you know i mean how can we you know within our financial means how

[50:25] can we do things and take suggestions from the

[50:29] employees as well i mean we can put all our heads

[50:33] together and figure out where we want to go

[50:35] it would be easier on a personnel committee level only because

[50:40] um there's two council members there so we don't have to worry about quorum

[50:44] issues and we can arrange things so it's that

[50:48] more convenient for employees and if somebody else wants

[50:51] to sit in on those meetings doesn't necessarily have to be myself

[50:56] if they want to take my place on the personal committee at a meeting because

[51:00] they have questions whatever but we could set

[51:05] some workshops up with employees that would meet

[51:08] employee schedules so like date you know some evenings afternoons whichever works

[51:13] the best that's just one suggestion i had i don't know how you all feel

[51:17] about that yeah i'd rather see that instead of

[51:20] saying okay we'll go to this percentage and then in five years

[51:23] we're back to where we right yeah well we can direct those

[51:28] questions jenny and ann can sit down and look at

[51:31] them and if it's like everything else that i used

[51:36] to do with the public works committee they can't explain why my opinion or my

[51:39] idea is wrong i think what we need to do is reaffirm

[51:44] that we want to stay in roughly in the middle and basically from

[51:48] that point take all your questions however you want

[51:52] to but that's the goal yeah i kind of agree i think

[51:57] with what you're saying is that i think we need to have

[52:00] as a council of general direction and then see where that goes and i'm

[52:08] you know as i sit here tonight i just got too many

[52:12] questions spinning in my head you know i i just need need time to process things

[52:18] because it's a big decision it's a big it's a big decision for our

[52:22] employees which obviously we want to retain

[52:25] but it's also you know a big decision for

[52:28] for our job is you know to be fiscally responsible

[52:33] right but there's a there's a difference between staying in

[52:39] the middle as we to use that to stay in the middle so

[52:42] that we're in compliance with the state is with conquer a

[52:48] comparable word that's different than staying in the

[52:50] middle with our comparable cities and i don't think that's what they're

[52:55] meaning itself but as far as state state with

[52:58] compliance with the state we are in compliance with the state correct

[53:01] so what we're really talking about is do is being competitive with our

[53:08] neighbors and being competitive in the market

[53:10] and staying there and it appears that if i understand this the way that we're set

[53:14] up our system will continue for probably

[53:17] for the most part to stay in compliance but not not competitive

[53:21] but not competitive right so because that's where i keep

[53:25] that's why i kind of asked them to square my mind because i keep

[53:30] right well if the five percent is one of the goals you can narrow that

[53:35] down to just make it three percent or two and a half percent

[53:38] instead of five true but you can also with employee input

[53:42] let's just say your employees are saying well

[53:45] you know maybe it's you know can we get a little

[53:48] can we bump up or work on this benefit or that benefit

[53:52] and because of that you know i i mean that's

[53:56] that's a question for them and they need to

[53:59] you know as a group i would encourage them to get together discuss it

[54:03] what are you thinking put it all down and and meet with the

[54:06] that's why i say you know meet with the jenny and personnel and

[54:11] then we can throw those questions at ann and then she can do her magic and then

[54:15] come back with a plan that'll work for us and it'll be good forever and ever

[54:19] and do cities ever look at their local area

[54:23] and wages and economics within their within their local area or is it we're

[54:28] always just strictly looking at other governmental

[54:32] cities uh they do look within their area the problem is is that there's a

[54:38] lot of positions in local government that don't have

[54:42] comparisons in the private sector

[54:48] you know you would have some you know you would have

[54:51] you know your bartenders liquor store clerk

[54:57] somewhat your administrative support and your maintenance but public safety

[55:03] city administrators it's it's pretty tough because of the wide range of

[55:07] of things that they deal with um whereas most private sector it's it's a

[55:13] single category of things services that they're

[55:17] providing so they do but it's usually a component

[55:21] of a larger study just because they're not going to find

[55:26] many positions where you're going to find a direct match

[55:31] terry you had a question yeah come on up so we can

[55:42] mr mayor you ought um

[55:46] just said that uh maybe meeting with employees asked them what they wanted to

[55:50] do it's great that you wanna want employee

[55:54] input but uh you didn't do a benefit study

[55:59] so therefore this is a pay discussion and ask employees whether they want uh

[56:05] more pay versus better benefit this doesn't change the pay issue no it

[56:11] doesn't so you're gonna get

[56:16] let's just say there's 10 employees here so you're going to get 10 different

[56:19] answers on on that one

[56:23] you're not going to be able to come to consensus so

[56:27] you need to take the benefit part out of it

[56:30] since you didn't do the study so you're just down to the pay issue

[56:38] and i think this just my thought haven't asked anyone else

[56:44] the right road to go down would be the personnel committee

[56:50] part of the page and then back amongst the council and then make

[56:57] your decision to bring it to the employees to get our

[57:01] feedback or whatever you decide that way okay thank you appreciate it

[57:10] but i think in general we're all in agreement that we want to be in the

[57:14] middle and not only just for being compliance

[57:19] but also for the market want to be in the middle of the market

[57:23] yep that's the way i would be thinking as well

[57:27] so when jenny starts to look at the budget for next year

[57:31] that's kind of the direction we should point her to

[57:35] right yes i agree i think so

[57:42] no i think that's great feedback and um i would just certainly say depending on

[57:46] if you know if there's any formal

[57:48] conversations that we have with staff or not

[57:51] i mean you can always provide feedback anytime so as we go through this

[57:55] we'll start to incorporate that direction into our budget

[58:00] and as we do that you know in the next couple of months we'll be starting our

[58:02] budget process so we'll have time then to see how that impacts

[58:07] with everything else and we have the council goals initiative we're working

[58:10] on too so that's a part of all of those things

[58:12] i think it will bring everything together so i can i can

[58:16] definitely do that work with the personnel committee

[58:19] and anne if we have questions and you know again we'll just say that

[58:23] it's open if there's ever questions or we need to talk about something more

[58:27] specifically yeah because that's you know we do need

[58:31] to see how that impacts the budget mr mayor i wonder if the

[58:36] personnel committee can also address the uh concept of doing this

[58:42] an update study rather rather than waiting five years

[58:46] doing it every two years come back with a recommendation to the rest of us or

[58:52] some something like that do we keep it keep fighters on it a little bit we

[58:58] should look at that so you're not making larger jumps

[59:01] yeah that i don't think that that would be a problem i think

[59:05] you know like ann suggested it would be pretty simple to do if you do

[59:09] if you call around and keep it kind of keep your finger on the pulse of the

[59:13] comparables um and what questions aren't we asking

[59:18] that we should what are what things aren't we consider

[59:21] actually you're you're asking very good questions um

[59:25] for this um i think you know asking about even though we didn't do a

[59:31] benefit study um you know when we did do it

[59:36] you were fairly consistent with the market

[59:40] but that doesn't mean you you can still look at benefits

[59:44] you know sometimes employees will say you know i wish the city was picking up

[59:49] a little bit more of my health insurance premium and

[59:53] i would maybe forego a little bit of an increase in wages if the city was doing

[59:58] that so even though it wasn't included this time um it's

[1:00:03] still a conversation that that the city council and the city staff

[1:00:08] can have about what is important to them is it is

[1:00:12] it wages is it benefits is a combination of the two

[1:00:17] and just getting that type of feedback

[1:00:21] thank you

[1:00:24] did you have anything else done no i just think that

[1:00:27] we should send over a personnel committee and you can

[1:00:30] digest it a little bit come back with some

[1:00:33] more ideas and we can talk about a little more okay

[1:00:37] everybody agree yeah yeah and if anyone has questions they can always ask

[1:00:43] come in and sit down with jenny employees have questions ask jenny

[1:00:46] um if you have suggestions give them to get them get them to jenny

[1:00:52] and and and you know nothing i mean put it all out

[1:00:57] there let's see what it is what we end up with

[1:00:58] so that's the key so and really time frame wise we're

[1:01:02] really looking budget time so we i mean yeah we'll have

[1:01:07] to do some meetings and sit down and discuss

[1:01:10] it the three of them in the next you know well i think we

[1:01:14] should next couple months it's coming up so

[1:01:16] yeah it's going to have to be it's not going to be one meeting

[1:01:19] so okay yeah it happens faster than you think

[1:01:23] is there anything else that any of the employees any of the people in the

[1:01:26] audience here want to bring up

[1:01:30] go ahead brian

[1:01:34] i would just like to mention that i do like the idea of value energy every two

[1:01:38] years because five years ago the city wanted to make

[1:01:42] sure they were paying us fairly and they they had a target of being in

[1:01:45] the middle and now we look five years later

[1:01:48] and we're five to six percent behind so if we did it every couple of years we

[1:01:53] wouldn't be coming in that situation where all of a sudden the city has to we

[1:01:56] can adjust their budget the following year

[1:01:58] at eighty to a hundred thousand dollars if we did it every two years it would

[1:02:01] i think alleviate a lot of problems thank you all right

[1:02:07] okay i don't see any further questions or

[1:02:10] nobody how we can uh entertain a motion to adjourn you have

[1:02:16] it a second all in favor aye aye

[1:02:21] opposed you thanks ann my pleasure and just contact me if any

[1:02:26] other questions arise will do thank you have a great night all

[1:02:30] right thanks you too

[1:02:36] hey craig can you see if the guys can hang in for a minute

[1:02:48] you

Special City Council Meeting April 15, 2021

Transcript