City Begins Drafting 2016 Budget

WAITSBURG – Employee compensation was a hot topic as it related to city budget planning at the Oct. 29 city council meeting. City Administrator Randy Hinchliffe sought council input on employee salaries, longevity compensation and insurance as he prepares to draft the city’s 2016 budget.

Hinchliffe provided the council with summary information and job descriptions on the city’s current employment positions consisting of two staff positions and four public works positions. Council members also received a report listing the average salaries for those positions, from information compiled from cities with populations of 500 to 1,500, who submitted information to the Association of Washington Cities (AWC).

Hinchliffe said the finance committee had previously reviewed what the City of Waitsburg offers against the state average for those positions, but failed to reach a decision on how close they wanted to keep Waitsburg employees to a competitive wage.

“Do you want to keep them within, 85%, 90%, 100%? We didn’t really have a good answer to that and decided to leave it to the council to give some direction before we put together the budget that goes to the hearing next month,” Hinchliffe said.

Hinchliffe said current provisions state that the city is to keep competitive with AWC but that there are no formal processes to make that happen. He said that setting a specific percentage will allow him to easily adjust the budget, making small salary adjustments annually, which will have minimal impact on the budget.

“One-percent is a lot easier to adjust for year to year as opposed to five percent all at once,” he said. “It’s just a matter of where you want it to fall,” he said.

The council agreed to set employee compensation at 85% of the AWC average rates. At that rate, Hinchliffe would be the only employee to receive a raise.

Hinchliffe said the finance committee had also discussed whether the city should provide employees with a longevity benefit in hopes that employees can be retained long-term.

“We have a pretty cohesive group right now and we’d like to keep them,” he said.

The council was split evenly between the four members in attendance. Gobel and Callahan were strongly supportive of a longevity increase. Councilor Kevin House said he was “not a fan” of longevity increases and Councilor Karl Newell said he’d never heard of them before.

“We need to keep the people we have. It’s too easy for them to work for us for awhile, get trained, and then leave to somewhere that will pay a lot more because of their training and background. To me, longevity is an important issue,” Gobel said.

Gobel instructed Hinchliffe to draft the preliminary budget to include a longevity increase of two percent for every five years of employment, to be reviewed when the budget returns to council next month.

Of the current city employees, Hinchliffe and Deputy Clerk Kelly Steinhoff have been with the city for almost twelve years and Public Works Director Jim Lynch has 21 years in with the city. Of the city crew workers, John Langford has been full time with the city for approximately two years, Jake Adams for six months, and Brian Callahan for two months.

The final item Hinchliffe mentioned was insurance. He said employees are looking at medical coverage increases of $100 to $150 in the coming year and asked if the council would consider raising the cap on the amount the city will pay toward insurance to help offset that.

Councilor Deb Callahan objected to the fact that employees currently have to wait six months to be eligible for insurance coverage. Hinchliffe said the six-month waiting period for benefits was unique to this year, due to budgeting issues and difficulty finding labor.

Following a lengthy discussion on insurance, it was decided that the council would provide an increase in the amount the city will pay toward insurance so that the employees don’t essentially “step backwards” with the insurance increase. No decision was made on changing the coverage waiting period.

Hinchliffe agreed to prepare a preliminary budget, which would include the proposed changes, for the council to review next month when councilors Marty Dunn and K.C. Kuykendall are present. Citizens are welcome to attend the Nov. 18 city council meeting and offer input for consideration in the 2016 budget development process.