The Garretson City Council met on Monday, June 1, and covered several topics. The issue with the most immediate impact to the town of Garretson was the adoption of Ordinance 657, which lifted capacity limits on local businesses, and the announcement that Citywide Clean-up had been rescheduled to August 29. However, the topics they covered were important and wide-ranging.
The meeting, which had all city councilors in attendance except for council member Dave Bonte, started with an update on natural gas. The council had to approve signing a new contract with Clayton Energy for 5 years instead of the initial two, so the company could hedge estimates out that far in order to see if pricing would be any better. This was done at the request of council member Bonte.
Currently, the natural gas market is very volatile, so nothing as far as price is being locked in by Clayton Energy. The representative is waiting for the market to settle a bit more. City Finance Officer Anna Uhl did note that the hedging was for winter months, and price fluctuation for natural gas during the summertime could still occur, even with the new contractor. The council will still need to approve pricing regularly once the contract takes effect October 1st. The council approved signing the new contract unanimously.
The council then heard an update from the Garretson Parks Advisory Committee (GPAC), which noted that recent miscommunication issues had been cleared up. They had lots of projects in the works, but weren’t ready to announce all of them.
Uhl stated that she had heard from Owen Wiese, the landowner of Devil’s Gulch. He wanted to commend GPAC and Parks Supervisor Randy Megard on how nice the parks looked. Council member Richelle Hofer concurred, noting how nice the new benches all looked. (Three benches remain to be placed, per GPAC member Carrie Moritz.)
The council then listened to a presentation given by Julie Nelson of Alternative HRD, who was commissioned to do a salary study in order to ensure City employees were being paid in both salary and benefits appropriately.
While Nelson commended the City for its benefits package, she did point out that comparable wages and salaries for two employees, the City Finance Officer and the City Maintenance/Utilities Supervisor, were substantially under market wages, especially for the length of time employed.
For instance, the current Finance Officer, which is a blended job that has many different job functions, has been serving for ten years. Her current hourly wage is $24.31, and comparable wages would be around $48 an hour. While the amounts given were hourly, the Finance Officer is salaried at $50,557. Nelson recommended wages be brought up to $62,304.
The Maintenance Supervisor, who has been employed for 30 years, is hourly at $30.52, and Nelson noted that comps are around $36. Nelson wanted to propose that the Maintenance Supervisor be changed from hourly to salaried, and also recommended the City start work immediately towards increasing both employees’ wages to market wages in order to ensure they retained and attracted talented staff.
After a final point from Nelson regarding philosophy of pay, council member Bill Hoskins proposed tabling any further discussion by council until the July council meeting, so they could all have a chance to digest all the information they had been given. The council plans to discuss the information much more in-depth at their July meeting so that budget discussions can begin in August.
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