ELKINS — The employee pay raises approved by Elkins City Council last week is just the first of several financial steps the city needs to take over the coming months, officials said.

Council 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 vote set 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.

“The plan the team arrived at raises the lowest paid employees — those previously in the $10 an hour range — approximately 35 percent, with a gradually decreasing percentage then applied for employees in each next higher dollar band,” a City of Elkins press release stated.

“We would have loved to give everyone the same percentage increase across the board, but that would have cost upwards of half a million dollars annually, and there was no way the city could have sustained that with the pot of money available to us,” City Treasurer Tracy Judy said.

“Because the wages of the highest-paid hourly employees were already a lot closer to being truly competitive than those at the lower end, the highest paid hourly employees received the smallest percentage increases.”

The pay increase did not include firefighters, because their pay is structured so differently from other General Fund employees, officials said.

“Although the hourly base rate paid to civil-service firefighters looks low, you have to keep in mind the 24-hour shift cycle at the department,” Elkins Fire Chief Steve Himes said.

“All firefighters work a minimum of 848 hours of scheduled overtime annually, plus 24 hours extra for each holiday. Even a probationary firefighter’s annual compensation is still significantly higher than that which is proposed for General Fund employees, even after the increase,” Himes added.

Officials decided the step and grade compensation system was no longer adequate for the city.

“The consensus was that the current step and grade plan wasn’t flexible enough to both recognize time in service with ongoing guaranteed cost-of-living increases while also enabling administrators to grant merit-based raises to top performers,” City Operations Manager Michael Kesecker said.

“We really feel these are also crucial pieces for recruitment and retention, so we are hoping to find a way to fold these into a new plan as well.”

In addition to hourly compensation, city employees receive a comprehensive benefits package, including health insurance (PEIA Plan A currently costs a single adult around $1,800 a year, with family plans available); $10,000 in life insurance paid for by the city with additional amounts available at employee’s cost; and optional dental, vision, disability and other forms of coverage. In addition to receiving time off for 11 state holidays, entry level city employees earn two weeks of vacation leave and more than two weeks of sick leave each year.

“In addition to implementing a new compensation and classification system, council must also decide how to address projected large increases in PEIA costs in coming years,” officials said. “After years of remaining flat, municipal PEIA costs are now projected to increase 18 percent in fiscal year 2025, 14.5 percent in fiscal year 2026, and 6 percent in fiscal year 2027.”

Currently, the City of Elkins and its employees share the cost of PEIA premiums.