Louisville increasing employees pay, formalizing positions and reviews
In August the Louisville City Council voted unanimously to raise its employees’ salaries effective Sept. 1.
Police officers can expect to see a $2.50 an hour raise, streets and utility workers a $2 raise. The smallest increase was around $1.50 and that was for the administrative department and firefighters.
“We have a great staff and some very dedicated employees who work hard,” said City Administrator Ricky Sapp.
In January the city gave out 5 percent cost of living increases, which Sapp said were the largest it has given in the last 10 years. Even with those increases, the city has continued to struggle to fill certain positions.
For the last several months the city has conducted its own wage rate study, and while the need for this was primarily driven by the desire to make police officer salaries more competitive with surrounding agencies, said that the study and the raises include all city departments.
“What we found is that we have done a good job giving cost-of-living adjustments to our employees, but we’ve never applied the cost of living to our base positions,” Sapp said. “We looked at every department and whatever we did to the base, we applied that to the current employees. Our police officer base went from $17.50 to $20, so every employee (in that department) saw the increase.”
Because they increased salaries by a dollar amount, the percentage of increase in each of these departments varied.
“It is anywhere from a 6 percent increase to a 20 percent increase. Lower paid employees get a higher percentage increase,” Sapp said.
Because they are getting this raise now, employees should not expect another cost-of-living increase in January of 2024.
Sapp said that he has told the employees that these increases come with expectations.
“With the exception of the police department, the staff we have is the staff you’ve got,” Sapp said. “We’re not hiring additional positions. This will not allow our budget to adjust for new positions.”
The primary driver of the wage rate study was the city’s police department, Sapp said. The department has been short-staffed for some time. Five years ago, the city’s base pay for an officer was $12.50 an hour. Some time ago the rate was changed to $17.50 an hour, the city changed its uniform and allowed officers to take their patrol vehicles home, all in an effort to make the positions more attractive.
Sapp said that by taking police officers’ base to $20 an hour they are making it competitive with surrounding communities and with the rates he has seen on the Department of Community Affairs’ Wage Rate Study website.
Louisville currently has a police chief, four full-time officers and one part-time officer.
“There are three employees we’ve had there for a long time,” Sapp said. “The other three have been the turner. A full staff for us is eight, but we typically keep it at six. That allows our officers to earn enough overtime so that they don’t have to go get a second job. Now, I’d just be glad to get back to six and we can worry then if we want to go to eight.”
The increase in base salaries is only for full time equivalent employees, Sapp said.
The city is also taking this time to formalize its positions in every department and identify those positions with more specific job titles and descriptions.
“For instance, in our streets department, we had an SPC 1 (Streets Parks and Cemetery) which was basically anything other than a supervisor. In the utility department we had a utility 1,” Sapp said. “We identified different levels of positions within that. So now we have an SPC1, SPC2 and SPC3.”
The city is still working to create the job descriptions for each position and creating a matrix associated with each of these.
“You have a category and a matrix associated with it that starts out at your base pay and then you develop criteria for how you advance such as moving up,” Sapp said. “Right now we are operating on a merit system, but there is no formal criteria for how you apply that merit. You have a good employee and his supervisor comes in and says he really wants to give this guy a raise. He makes the justification and that’s kind of what we do."
Under the new system, every employee will receive a formal evaluation, with specific criteria, from their supervisor every year. Sapp will evaluate all of the supervisors, review and approve their recommendations. The mayor will then review and approve Sapp’s recommendations.
The city plans to use American Rescue Plan Act funds to help offset the expense of these salary increases this year.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Louisville increasing employees pay, formalizing positions and reviews
