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Min 07/29/1999 507 Wichita Falls, Texas Memorial Auditorium Building July 29, 1999 Item 1 The City Council of the City of Wichita Falls, Texas met in special session on the above date in the Council Room of the Memorial Auditorium Building at 8:30 o'clock a.m., with the following members present: Kay Yeager - Mayor Arthur Bea Williams - Councilors Dan Shine - James Esther, Jr. - Johnny Burns - Bud Beaty - James Berzina - City Manager Bill Sullivan - Asst. City Attorney Lydia Torres - City Clerk Councilor Altman was not in attendance at the 8:30 a.m. meeting. Mayor Yeager called the meeting to order. Mr. George Bonnett announced that, regarding the water issue, the City is running at capacity and asked that citizens reduce water usage by 50% and that the public cease daytime watering. Wholesale customers will be contacted to adhere to these restrictions as well. He noted that at this point it was strictly voluntary and if it can be avoided, the City will not mandate this. Mayor stated that they had been requested to recess and reconvene at 1:30 p.m. today. Council recessed at 8:35 a.m. and reconvened at 1:40 p.m. Councilor Altman was in attendance at this point. Item 2 A discussion was held on preliminary FY 1999-2000 budget figures and possible Employee Pay Plan adjustments. City Manager provided information on the current preliminary budget and informed that Staff had brought Council a pool of funds and Council will decide where they will be distributed. Mr. Jim Dockery presented the figures to Council and provided information on how these funds had been used in the past. Mr. Dockery addressed the General Fund revenues and expenditures. City Manager informed that the pool of funds is $744,777 for the employee programs. Mrs. Stricklin noted that she had rounded that figure to $750,000. Mrs. Stricklin detailed the following employee programs - Health Plan, Workers Compensation, Employee Terminal Pay, Fire Department Overtime, and Step Plan. City Manager provided a history of the Police Department salary increases. Mayor commented that she did not think they could give the Police Department a 15% increase if Proposition 20 passes and we will not be able to give any other raises as well. City Manager 508 Item 2 continued stated that if Proposition 20 passes that tells us that the citizens are willing to pay more taxes to pay the Police Department. I think we should raise taxes in order to do that. Police Department may be doing us a favor - the City employees have for a long time needed pay increases, and under-emphasis has been put on tax rate increase. Past Police Department pay increases were discussed. It was clarified that across the board is one increase and classifications is another increase. City Manager noted that most employees are treated equally but what we are trying to put in is Police and Fire Step Plans in place because that is where they begin to get behind. Under riding theme was to give across the board and then go under those that are the most out of line than those that are hard to hire. He asked Council to look hard at the step plan with or without the vote on Proposition 20. Councilor Burns commented that just because somebody calls it a cost of living, it is not a mandate to be given every year, it is not automatic. Whatever they are, they are pay increases. He added that they want to be reasonable to everyone not just one group. Councilor Altman stated that tax increases on property tax have come largely from school district taxes and occasionally from county taxes. He wanted to know how long it had been since the City had a tax increase. City Manager gave a brief history on tax increases for the City and informed that in 1993 or 1994 was the last year that the tax rate was moved up. The tax rate and the growth were discussed. Councilor Altman commented that the other taxing entities have raised the tax rate in addition to the growth, where the City has not. The tax rate that the City taxes its citizens is substantially less than it was fifteen years ago. City Manager concurred and added that it was nineteen cents less. Mrs. Stricklin went over the job classifications and those positions that are below average. Police and Fire Step Plans were discussed. Mrs. Stricklin stated that there is a very large number of City employees that have topped out in that 12 year Step Plan for five or more years, so adding three steps gives those employees an opportunity, with their productivity meeting standards, to have 2.5% increases over the next three years. City Manager felt it was a good idea because so many have been topped out for so long, however, you need to consider that in three or four years you will need to add more steps. Mayor asked for Council opinions on which pay plan they were favoring, putting aside the police petition and election and thinking about the entire organization. Councilor Williams said that in the absence of the 15% mandate that would come from the vote, she would like to see some figures where they become a part of the category that perhaps avail themselves of some step increases. An adjustment over a set number of years and then some steps. City Manager wanted Council to know that there is a feeling among the Police and Fire veterans that if a step plan is put into place they want to be put in the step that equals the number of years they have in their position. For instance, if they have been there eight years they expect to be in step 8. City Manager suggested that Council come up with their own plan forgetting about the election, and realize that whatever is in that plan applies to that 15% that passes but you will step past that and look at the rate a second time. You have the time to do that because you do not have to set the rate until September. Mrs. Stricklin referred to Councilor Williams' question and stated that if you want to give the Police Department the step plan for all the police civil service classifications of 2%, and an additional adjustment of 2% and a 3% across the board that would make 7% for police to start with, which would cost $492,796. From the $750,000, General Fund money, that would leave you $258,000 for everyone else unless you increase taxes. Councilor Altman added that either that or cut expenditures, which is an option. Mayor commented that if you cut expenditures you are looking at cutting services. City Manager suggested that Council prepare their plan, review it and make the necessary cuts. It should be clearly understood that you have made your cuts and any additional funding requirements would have to come from the tax. 509 Item 2 continued Councilor Altman said they can talk about concepts today. For instance, Concept One - if Proposition 20 is not successful decide what we would like to do and decide the funding later. Concept Two - if Proposition 20 does pass we still need to talk about what we need to do out of fairness. Also, if it does pass do we still need to look at other expenditures for other City employees along with that, out of a sense of fairness. Mayor commented that she did not think they could focus on one department to the detriment of others. Councilor Shine thought that we need to be fair with employees. Things like surveys bother me and I do not trust surveys that have metroplex cities in them because it influences the survey. You have to use something, and basically cost of living is a cop-out. Giving across the board increases is the easy way but sometimes that is the only way. Sometimes that might be a figure that you back into with what is left, after you try to get your adjustments up. It is not a cut and dried plan. Councilor Shine felt that the more data that is given to you the worse it gets. There are a lot of employees that are underpaid and we are trying to get to that point of who they are and how much they are underpaid. I think it is a director's responsibility to do it, but on the downside of that you would worry about favoritism. So you are faced with the facts of people that are hard to hire. I think that is justifiable and you need to adhere to that because it is a fact of life but I think that is what influences surveys because they are hard to hire. Councilor Shine spoke on salary adjustments, and he felt that someone needs to weigh the survey a little bit. If someone is unhappy they would quit because they would be unhappy. I worry about the survey influencing decisions. He suggested that giving the bottom part of Section 1 a different raise than is given on Section 2. You could separate the top from the bottom, but it would cause a lot of trouble. He said he was throwing things out there to complicate this. He said that we have to get all the money we can to set aside for salaries. Hopefully, we might have more money out there or we could raise taxes. I would like to, more or less, get all the money and the things we have to do. He thought salary adjustments were important but was not so sure step raises were important to increase because he felt that problem could be solved by giving that class of people, that are above the step, a one time raise a year. Police and Fire don't have steps and there is nothing wrong with that and that is not an injustice, but if it was we could take care of that over a period of years. He was having trouble weighing this and he hoped that we could come up with $750,000 plus. I think the election will tell us and if Proposition 20 passes it will have some mandates. I think the least item here is across the board increases. If we could come up with things that we think are an injustice and are out of kilter, then use what we have left for across the board and hope we can get up into whatever percentage is necessary. We are now into the management position of available money and we can't do anything else. From that mind set you are going to influence across the board increases, if you truly go out and try to find all the money you can for salaries. Councilor Williams commented that there is no employee who is being given an across the board increase who has not been evaluated. Mrs. Stricklin explained that process as well as the step plan. Councilor Shine's concern was that the survey was the means for giving those raises and he would like it geared more to a management decision for those raises. I have trouble with the survey but if certain cities were taken out you could make this very good. Everything is based on what TML says in the survey. I would agree for department heads to tell us which ones they feel are below average. That may not be in the survey but in Wichita Falls you can say that is how it is. Mrs. Stricklin explained that there was a program that was put in place about twenty years ago which is similar to what Councilor Shine was proposing - a bonus type program. However, what happened was that the employees did not think it was fair and it did not work. TML gives us a comparison overall in job descriptions. I believe that gives me some idea and that information is as good as we can get; we have to have a measuring point. 510 Item 2 continued Mrs. Stricklin provided background information on the overall plan which was developed by consultants in 1964. This plan is still in place, and she felt that if new consultants were hired to develop a new plan it would end up costing the City more. Councilor Shine said he would like the survey of what the tax rates are in some of the cities. Councilor Altman informed that they are in the June or July TML magazine and in the survey we are the 20'h largest city of the reporting cities. There are only two above us population-wise that had a lower tax rate and one was Amarillo at a 25 cent tax rate with no general obligation debt and the other is Irving at a 49 cent tax rate with debt. Of the top 25 cities we have the third lowest tax rate of the reporting cities. Councilor Burns suggested taking the menu of various options and instead of looking at them as we have, invert the list and the number at the top of the page would be the across the board increase and then go down with these other categories. We start at the other end and start with 2.5% adjustment or whatever the adjustment for those positions that are out of line. We put that number up first then decide if we want the step increase and all those other things. Then we work to the bottom of what is left and we decide what is appropriate and we add that at the end. Mayor commented that then you run the risk of some people perhaps not getting any salary increase. Councilor Burns said that is a possibility unless you are looking at the bottom number as how you are looking at the tax rate. The other thing about the survey is that it has, for me, less to do with what percentage we are off the average that is on this survey, as it does with the next item on this menu - the hard to hire positions. That is far more important than what is on the survey. If I can get more money doing the same job then what is keeping me here, something is. Maybe that particular salary for that job is not necessarily a bad thing but if you have a position that you can't find someone to fill or you can't keep them then that information is more critical than what percentage you are off on this survey. As a practical matter, what happens out in the marketplace is what is real and what happens in the survey is numbers on the survey. If we have long time tenured employees they do deserve a raise but, for me personally, if a department has a difficult time in a particular area that is the most critical to me. Councilor Esther did not think it was that simple. We have some people who might be 94% behind but then you have to take the fact that in addition to really enjoying their work, we have an obligation not to take advantage of them. We have said that we want to be just to all, and you keep loyal people when you are just and fair to them. He said he liked the City Manager's idea of coming up with our own plan, leaving the election out of it then we as a Council will feel that we have been just to all the City employees. After that if the voters pass something else down the pike it is on them. Councilor Burns commented that there is more to it than the actual dollar. I am saying that I have to be fair to my employees because they will not stay if they are not treated fair. I just think it makes sense to invert these figures and start at the bottom and go to the top. Councilor Altman suggested prioritizing the concepts we want to consider. City Council recessed at 4:00 p.m. and reconvened at 4:15 p.m. Mrs. Stricklin addressed the hard to hire and retain classifications for this year. She noted that the top three hardest positions to retain are the public safety trainee, construction maintenance worker, and the laborers. Councilor Altman suggested setting a dollar amount for those hard to hire and retain positions and have Mrs. Stricklin and the City Manager determine how those dollars are spent within those positions to accomplish the most. City Manager said he felt that is a step in the right direction because you are doing two things there - addressing positions that are hard to hire as well as building in some discretion. 511 Item 2 continued One of the things we have to look out for as we do this is if we address the positions, and it may explain why we recommend 2.5% not to exceed 5%, you may move them beyond those that supervise them. That is why we appreciate your discretion in that. We could look at this and see the overall effect and that is why the partial explanation as to why across the board increases have been seized upon. We may have to look at the whole category of people until we come to a logical stopping point so we do not upset that balance. It was Council consensus that they begin on a reverse order from what was done last year and consider the hard to hire and retain positions first. The other options they want to look at are the step plans, including steps for Police and Fire and extending step plans by three years for the other employees as part of their overall review and consideration for prioritization. Councilor Shine commented that he would prefer to look at the step plans as opposed to the certification at this time. Mrs. Stricklin informed that if Council selected the hard to hire and retain and added approximately $20,000 to that for a 5% increase instead of the 2.5% and selected the step for Police and Fire and other employees, the cost would be $421,684 General Fund money. Councilor Shine still had trouble with the across the board increase and wanted to wait until the last minute to see where they were. He added that he was not against it. Councilor Altman agreed, but we are not there yet. He asked if there was a Council consensus that after the hard to retain the next classification that they would like to look at is the step plan. Councilor Shine said he would like a discussion of the step plan versus an amount of money for those that are out of the step plan. What is our goal here? Mayor stated that we had the step plan in place and for whatever reason past Councils opted not to add years to the step plan as recommended in the initial plan from the consultants. It has come up now since we are discussing the Police and Fire Step Plans. City Manager commented that it was more of a need-driven situation. We have looked at it and feel those that have stayed with us should be addressed by adding the three additional steps. Additional discussion ensued regarding the step plan. Council consensus was to look at the three year increase. Fire and Police Step Plans were addressed. Mrs. Stricklin noted that Fire will have 15 steps. City Manager stated that theoretically everyone will go to Step O. Fire have Steps A-D and they will get Steps E-O added. Police will get Steps A-O that do not exist now. They will be treated uniformly. Across the board increases were discussed. Mayor stated that if we bring up certification we need to look at certification for other City employees whose positions require certification. Councilor Shine stated that he would prefer not to put in certification. Certification issue was discussed at length. Councilor Altman commented that according to what has been discussed we have used two-thirds of the money with the hard to hire and the step programs which leaves less than 1.5% for an across the board increase. That is with no tax increase but before we have set out to cut expenses if we can, based on the potential budget that will be submitted to us. City Manager stated that Council has set this in motion regardless of the election. You are beginning to say that the election is in addition to what you are going to do here. Councilor Beaty agreed with Councilor Shine on the survey. He thought it was an excellent survey but he would have preferred to have seen cities like San Angelo included. I think it attacks the credibility of the survey to compare us with cities like Plano and other cities in the Metroplex. I am happy about the way we have approached it this year. City Manager commented that we know the flaws that the survey has and we know you can do anything you want with surveys, you can run in some cities and you can leave some out. We use it just as sort of a starting point, but more importantly to us is what the local economy is and the local trends. 512 Item 2 continued Mayor expressed appreciation to Mrs. Stricklin, Mr. Dockery and their staff for the work and preparation that went into the salaries. City Council adjourned at 5:00 p.m. PASSED AND APPROVED this day of , 1999. KA RYN A. YE GER MAYOR ATTEST: 1 ' Lydia Torres City Clerk NOTICE OF MEETING Special Called Meeting Of The Mayor And City Council Of The City Of Wichita Falls, Texas To Be Held In The City Council Chambers Of The Memorial Auditorium On Thursday, July 29, 1999, Beginning At 8:30 a.m. And Commencing Once Again Friday, July 30, 1999 At 8:30 a.m. If Necessary. City Council: Mayor Kay Yeager - Councilors Arthur Bea Williams, Dan Shine, James Esther, William Altman, Johnny Burns, and Bud Beaty 1. Call to Order. 2. Discussion Of Preliminary FY 1999-2000 Budget Figures And Possible Employee Pay Plan Adjustments. 3. Adjourn Or Recess, If Necessary. (If Council recesses, it will re- convene to Discuss Preliminary FY 1999-2000 Budget Figures And Possible Employee Pay Plan Adjustments on Friday, July 30, 1999 at 8:30 a.m. in the Council Chambers, Memorial Auditorium.) Wheelchair or handicapped accessibility to the meeting is possible by using the handicapped parking spaces, ramp and elevator located off the east parking lot on Sixth Street entrance. Spanish language interpreters, deaf interpreters, Braille copies or any other special needs will be provided to any person requesting a special service with at least 24 hours notice. Please call the City Clerk's Office at 761-7409. CERTIFICATION I certify that the above notice of meeting was posted on the bulletin board at Memorial Auditorium, Wichita Falls, Texas on the day of , 19 at o'clock (a.m.)(p.m.). City Clerk