While pay raises for Edmonds’ roughly 230 union employees are already set at between 5.5 and 6.2 percent for 2009, raises for the city’s other 43 non-union employees are less certain.
A possible 5.8 percent raise for those employees will be discussed by the City Council Dec. 16.
If approved, the cost of the non-union raises would be about $205,000, and would go into effect Jan. 1, 2009, said Debi Humann, the city’s human resources director.
The cost of the union pay increases is about $800,000, she said.
Rising prices are forcing the city’s hand, Mayor Gary Haakenson said.
City officials try to match employee pay bumps to the regional consumer price index (CPI), a number generated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The CPI for the Seattle area jumped 5.8 percent from June 2007 to June 2008.
“It is a perfect storm, a tough economy, and nobody’s happy to give anybody a 5.8 percent increase,” Haakenson said Dec. 8. “We were all shocked by how high the cost of living increases were.”
The city also monitors the pay of employees in comparable Puget Sound region cities, Humann said.
With the proposed 5.8 percent raise, the wages for the city’s non-union employees will stay at the median, she said.
If Edmonds falls behind other cities, valuable employees will leave, she said.
“You have to stay at the median in order to retain your employees,” Humann said. “The CPI, at 5.8 percent, is horrendously high, but if that’s what it is, that’s what it is.”
Edmonds has fewer employees than many of the 17 cities it compares itself to, she said.
Of those cities, Edmonds has the 10th most full-time employees, despite being only one of three cities that has a fire department, a police department, a city court, a pool and a wastewater treatment plant.
“We have less than other cities, but we are getting the same work done,” Humann said.
In November, a City Council majority rejected an attempt to lower the proposed non-union raise from 5.8 percent to 5.5 percent.
On Dec. 2, the city passed a budget that closed what started as a $5.4 million shortfall in the 2009-2010 biennial budget. The budget included numerous budget cuts, and $4.5 million in new taxes.
Edmonds cannot afford to hand out raises in a time of crisis, especially when most private-sector citizens are doing without, said Councilmember Steve Bernheim.
“The fiscal situation is more serious now than it was four months ago, or six months ago. The stock market has collapsed,” he said Nov. 25. “I would love to pay everyone everything, but I see (it as) my personal responsibility to attempt to control (costs) … and we cannot increase the salaries 5.8 percent across the board, because the money is too tight.”
Others argued that the full 5.8 percent increase is needed to fight “wage compression,” where non-union supervisors make less than their staff. Compression is a growing problem, Humann said.
“We have to get a handle on that,” said Councilmember Deanna Dawson. “There is not an incentive for people to stay here, and want to move up into management, if they will be taking pay cuts to do that.”
Union security
The city’s five unions all negotiated raises earlier this year for contracts that will run from 2008-2010.
The police union got a 6.2 percent increase, the police department’s clerical staff got a 6.2 percent increase, the fire union got a 5.8 percent increase, the city’s Service Employees International Union got a 5.8 percent increase, and the city’s Teamster union got a 5.5 percent increase.
Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com
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