City officials have given initial approval to a salary ordinance establishing pay ranges for city workers next year, but some city council members are concerned with the fairness of the pay ranges.
Columbus City Council members on Tuesday unanimously passed the first reading of the salary ordinance, which establishes minimum, midpoint and maximum pay levels.
The ordinance was developed last year from a salary compensation study performed by a McCordsville-based firm, Total Reward Solutions, which evaluated the salaries of city government employees.
The consultant looked at Columbus employees’ pay in the parks and recreation department, city utilities and public safety, and compared them to peer positions at similar-sized Indiana municipalities such as Anderson, Greenwood, Kokomo and Noblesville, while salary ordinances were also obtained from the cities of Bloomington, Jeffersonville, Lafayette and Terre Haute.
In the ordinance’s first year, the city proposed bringing 170 public safety employees to the midpoint level over the next two years, while the remainder of employees would be moved to that level over three years. Brinegar said at a Sept. 4, 2018, city council meeting that bringing employees to the midpoint would be dependent on a person’s performance evaluation.
Brinegar presented the ordinance, now in its second year, to the council Tuesday. Brinegar noted that while many workers’ ranges are the same, what they’re actually paid is different from one another based on what the department heads determine for each employee.
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
