By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Williston city government has never been in any danger of going broke, and that is true today, but the city is being run differently under first-year City Manager Jackie Gorman as evidenced by all the new employees and how wage increases were handled.
In her first year, Gorman and her managers in public works requested and received permission from the City Council to add 3 new employees in parks and recreation, 3 new employees in the water department, and 2 new employees in the city electric utility.
Spending increased as a result. City council members approved the new positions.
The human resource director position existed before Gorman was hired last year but Gorman wanted a more professional HR department and created a new job description that resulted in the hiring of Deanna Nelson who earns $4 more per hour than her predecessor and has better credentials. City council members approved her $22.66 per hour salary.
Williston also hired Aaron Mills as the technology manager and Mills has been approved to hire an IT specialist to help him with technology duties including establishing COWLINK, a grant-funded and city-based internet provider with a transmitter located on the water tower near the Winn Dixie shopping center. The city is combining two existing part-time positions to create the assistant for Mills and therefore the new full-time position doesn’t involve additional funding this year. COWLINK isn’t operating yet but Mills said it won’t be long. Mills’ $28.74 per hour salary didn’t increase.
Gorman herself was approved this week for a 4 percent pay increase at the most recent council meeting on Tuesday, which amounts to $3,100 per year. Her base salary will rise to $80,600. Her total payroll cost to the city currently, without the raise, is more than $105,000. She won’t officially receive the raise until the council approves a resolution at its next board meeting.
Another example of two top-level staffers receiving big raises was an employee identified as an administrative assistant who received about a $2 per hour pay raise from the manager. The hourly rate increased from $15.91 to $18. The salary of the community development and grants manager increased by $2.57 per hour from $24.98 to $27.55. Managers were asked to collect information from other municipalities on how much money people in similar positions were earning to make Williston more competitive.
In past years, employees citywide often got an across-the-board pay raise that varied from year to year but was often in the 2-3 percent range. This year the procedure was very different. It’s unclear who came up with the pay raise plan, but Gorman allowed Finance Director Stephen Bloom to explain how it works in response to a Spotlight public records request. The city council was consulted about the proposed plan in a budget workshop and gave its blessings to this new way of giving out raises.
“In reference to the records request below, the Council did not approve an across-the-board raise. The raises were based on the amounts requested by the Managers, then discussed at the workshops and later adopted by the council,” Bloom said.
Rank and file employees received pay raises of varying sizes depending on the department manager’s recommendations. In the case of three customer service representatives behind the front desk at City Hall, one of the representatives received a $2.87 per hour raise from $13.13 to $16, one got no raise and remained at $16.80 per hour and the third was given a 20 cent raise from $16.80 to $17 per hour.
There was no particular formula used to arrive at the raises. The managers were largely in control of who got raises and who didn’t and how much of an increase the employee received, resulting in a lumpy fiscal landscape in which some employees fared well and others didn’t get much of an increase or received no increase.
The charts accompanying this story show the job positions in every department across the city, the current hourly rate, and the rate for the 2022 fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2021. Readers may notice triple zeroes next to some positions in the category of current rate, indicating the position didn’t exist or wasn’t filled last year.
This is kind of nerdy stuff to sort through, but for those who are interested in how the city doled out raises for this fiscal year, it’s a must-read, though probably boring. Bloom supplied the charts in response to a Spotlight public records request that passed through Gorman’s office and the office of Clerk Latricia Wright.
The city is nearing the point where it must start discussing next year’s budget and whether additional revenues will be needed to support spending levels. Employees are often the biggest ticket item in any local government budget. The more employees the city adds to the payroll, the higher the costs for city taxpayers.
Bloom said the city budget is balanced at this point.
“It’s balanced. They’re required to balance it, but the city is using some cash reserves to balance it,” Bloom said. State law requires local governments to operate with a balanced budget.
————————–
The three charts shown below were created by the Williston city finance director to show salary levels, benefits, and the total cost for employees in all departments including the city council, top managers, and rank and file employees. The job positions is listed on the left. The type of expenditures including hourly wages is listed across the top of the three charts. All the pay raises are final for the current fiscal year except for that of the city manager and city clerk. Those two positions are evaluated separately by council members and given raises as the council sees fit. The city manager has been evaluated and is set to get a 4 percent raise from the council. The clerk is in the process of being evaluated or is about to be evaluated, but the council hasn’t decided on a raise for that position.
Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt February 12, 2022; Posted February 12, 2022
