City workers earn 10% below market

Administration working on a plan for next year

Editor’s note: This is the last of a three-part series focusing on pay of Yuma city employees. It addresses the overall city employee pay. The first part centered on the police department. The second part tackled the fire department pay plan.

Yuma employees as a whole earn about 10 percent below the market for all positions combined, according to a midpoint comparison.

Monica Welch, director of human resources, presented a compensation and pay plan overview to the City Council during a Sept. 18 work session. She noted that the city established the current pay plan in 2001 after a compensation study.

It had a 40 percent spread between the minimum and maximum of the range. The original structure took seven to 12 years to get to the top of the range, and annual pay increases varied between 3 to 5 percent.

In 2015, annual pay increases changed to 2.5 percent, increasing the time to reach the top of the range to 14 years. In 2016, annual pay increases changed to 2 percent, with up to 1 percent pay in performance bonus, and the time to reach the top of the pay range increased to 17 years (nine years to reach midpoint).

The last compensation study was done in 2013 and implemented over two years. The pay for city positions was evaluated using the League of Arizona Cities and Towns survey from 2017. It used 21 comparable cities with 10 cities above and 10 below, including San Luis and Somerton. The midpoint of the salary range for positions was identified and averaged to determine the market value of the position, Welch said.

The results indicated that Yuma as a whole is about 10

percent below the market for all positions combined using midpoint comparison. For this study, 26 positions were reviewed.

According to this study, the police department is 8 percent below market on average for sworn positions based on midpoint comparison. Captains are 14 percent below, lieutenants 7 percent below, sergeants 7 percent below, and officers 4 percent below. YPD was ranked 15 out of 21 for police officer positions in the state.

The fire department is 5 percent below the market on average for firefighter positions based on midpoint comparison. Fire captains are 5 percent below and firefighters 5 percent below. YFD was ranked 16 out of 19 for firefighter positions.

In 2017, the turnover was 10.9 percent, with 104 employees leaving, mostly voluntarily. Other than the police department, the Public Works and Parks and Recreation departments had the most turnover. Many Public Works positions are entry level so it experiences “quite a bit” of turnover, Welch said.

The majority said they were leaving because health insurance was too expensive for families, although it’s free for employees.

Concerns brought up by Welch included recruitment and retention of employees; the time it takes to get to the top of the pay range; compression issues (supervisors making less than a subordinate); below the labor market value for most positions; and funding to address these issues.

Her recommendations included developing a strategic initiative to address total compensation; using the existing pay plan and expediting the time it takes to reach midpoint by increasing annual pay raises to 3 percent; conducting a formal compensation study with multi-year implementation plan to become market competitive; utilizing a compensation committee to review and recommend options for improvement to pay plan; and reducing the size of the current pay ranges (shorter time to top out).

ADMINISTRATION WORKING ON A PLAN

City Administrator Greg Wilkinson believes something can be done about the city employee pay but not until after December when it has revenue and retirement numbers for the year.

During an interview Thursday, Wilkinson said that having city positions 10 percent below market leaves the city open to “pilfering” from metro areas “who come here to pilfer our talent. We’re known in the metro areas for having good employees that are qualified and good, qualified police officers. So that’s one of the things that we’ve had a struggle with.”

Although the city has been looking for solutions for a while, “the bottom line is you gotta live within your means, and we’ve been doing better, but we still have a ways to go,” he said.

With city revenues steadily growing at 3 percent in the last two years, “the numbers look good again so we’re trying to do an assessment of what we will be able to do next year.”

However, he noted, the city also has to balance the revenue increases with expenses. “We have to cover those, but then you also want to take care of the employees. That’s the biggest thing when you look at the police department.”

When Wilkinson first arrived at the city in 2010, the police department was down 35 officers. “We have done a really good job in fixing that, and we were fully staffed for about two years, but then when everyone started hiring in the Phoenix metro areas three years ago that’s when we lost the 35 officers. We did do a midyear pay adjustment which helped quite a bit.”

The city was currently down seven officers, he added.

Yuma also changed the way it recruits, which has also helped. The city used to recruit in bulk, bringing in a couple hundred for interviews and testing. The applicants would be weeded out through the hiring process, which included polygraphs, interviews and background checks.

“We still do that but now we’re putting more focus on individual recruiting,” Wilkinson said, explaining that the department finds a good police officer, it hires the officer immediately. The officer position is open continuously, and the city gets applications throughout the year, but it also has a full-time recruiter who goes on recruiting trips.

“It looks like it’s paying off,” he noted.

The city still has to deal with “pilfering” agencies who don’t do any academy training; they just wait for other agencies, like Yuma, to train new officers, and after three to eight years, they are “marketable.”

“It is hard to compete with metro Phoenix because of their revenues. They tend to tax more, so they have more revenue. We’ve stayed away from that. But in order to compete we have to have comparable revenue sources,” he said.

“The issue is we’re trying to do something. I don’t think there’s any debate. Everyone agrees. We need to do something to bump up pay. It’s the No. 1 issue,” Wilkinson said.

“The challenge is trying to stay within revenue, do something for the PD and still take care of the rest of our employees. It’s not easy to balance that. That’s the dilemma.”

He also noted that the city is “working for things in the long-term that will help.”

The police and fire departments put together presentations of what they want to see, but Wilkinson was not involved directly.

“Bottom line is, I believe we can do something in this next budget year, or something after December, I believe we can do something to help. Can we execute the plans exactly as they are? I’m not sure.

“We have great employees and I’m pretty confident that we will be able to do something, and I know council has ideas, but I won’t be able to tell numbers until December,” Wilkinson said.