Trending
ELKINS -- Elkins City Council has voted to approve pay raises for many of the city's hourly employees, and also to eliminate the "step and grade" compensation plan which the city instituted in 2018.
The actions were taken "in response to crisis-level staffing shortages in critical functions, such as the Street Department, and difficulty retaining employees in all departments," according to documents provided by the city.
The vote sets a new minimum wage of $14.03 per hour,"for the employees that council has authority over -- general fund and sanitation fund employees, with the exception of the fire department, at the specification of the fire chief," City Clerk Sutton Stokes said during Thursday evening's council meeting.
"The water fund and wastewater department, those are controlled by their own boards and so you can't set their pay levels," Stokes said.
The pay raises will result in a $183,878 increase in the General Fund payroll, and a $112,464 increase in the Sanitation Fund payroll.
Fifth Ward Councilman Dave Parker asked, "Where are we taking those revenues from?"
City Treasurer Tracy Judy responded, saying late last year she renegotiated the city's pool cash interest with Mountain Valley Bank.
"That will pay for 33% of the increase," Judy said. "Operations had a restructuring ... that will pay about 27%. And then the rest, we're going to be able to use some excess funds that we have."
Fourth Ward Councilwoman Nanci Bross Fregonara said, "Getting close to that $15 living wage is something that council members now and in the past have wanted to see, and this is extraordinary."
The compensation increase approved Thursday will be applied retroactively beginning with Sept. 3.
Council adopted the "step and grade" Classification and Compensation Plan in August 2018, which included the opportunity for annual review of wages and possible wage increases based on employee evaluations and available revenues.
Fourth Ward Councilman Andrew Carroll asked why the "step and grade" plan had to be eliminated.
"The problem is, if we tried to keep the current plan, after having done all the work to come up with the compensation amounts that are before you in your packets, for the general fund and sanitation fund employees, then it would have been necessary to kind of recalibrate the whole step and grade thing, fit those into the slots," Stokes said."…There are a lot of practical issues there that seem kind of daunting…
"It just seemed like the best thing to do was to take the action now that would help fill the critical positions. Recognize that, for the next few months, it may be necessary to proceed carefully with anyone new who's hired during that time. If there's any reason to tweak… the admin officers are going to work together to make sure that whatever is arrived at is going to strike others as fair and fits in with the budget.
"Basically, it's going to be on us to work as efficiently as we can to come up with what that next plan looks like in a very soon-approaching phase, the next phase of the process," Stokes said.
Carroll said, "So this is sort of like the most logistically simple way to address the need in this current moment?"
Stokes responded, "Yes, given that it's coming from what is fair to say is approaching a crisis, where if you don't have a street department in the next couple months, there's some things that could really stumble."
In July, City Operations Manager Michael Kesecker told council that the city was in a "dire situation" in terms of staffing issues, and he asked them to help him find a solution.
Kesecker said the street department in particular was having trouble retaining employees, and going into winter with not enough employees to plow the city's streets was a losing plan.
Council voted unanimously Thursday to approve the pay increases and remove the "step and grade" plan.
After the vote, Mayor Jerry Marco said, "I want to personally thank you because that's probably one of the most important votes that you guys ever took since I've been in office, just to take care of our employees. So, thank you."