The director and superintendents in Española’s Public Works Department will receive raises after the City Council approved a new pay scale and Memorandum of Understanding with the employee union during a special council meeting on Monday.
Superintendents at level I, I, III and IV will all be paid $80,080 per year under the new pay scale. The director will be paid $95,896. Employees must meet all certification requirements for their position to be eligible for the pay increase.
Previously, those in the superintendent I position were paid $67,225, superintendent II and III were paid $72,280 and superintendent IV was paid $73,528. Director pay will go from $90,896 to $95,896.
Public Works Director Elijah Mares said the raises are needed to retain employees and they are already short-staffed in several departments.
“We don’t want to burn out people,” he said. “The other thing that we want to start preventing is we train people, spend all this money and where there’s time, licensing, classes we send them to, everything we do, and then we lose them to other entities. By doing this, this helps alleviate that.”
While the pay scale increase and the AFSCME Local 1188 MOU approval will not immediately change things, it is the first step to get the city moving in the right direction, Mares said.
“The MOU is also stating that between the city and Local 1188, there’s an understanding to move forward with these (wage increases) right here and to open up articles in January at mid-year budget review,” he said.
Only a brief description of the MOU was provided during the meeting. The document was not provided in the agenda packet and the MOU was not discussed in detail by the councilors prior to their vote to approve it. While the MOU and pay scale increase were discussed at a finance committee meeting held immediately prior to the special council meeting, it was not publicly broadcast online. An Inspection of Public Records Act request for the committee meeting recording is pending.
City Manager Lauren Reichelt first discussed raises for Public Works employees during the Oct. 28 council meeting. She said she had begun working with Mares to identify unfilled positions to eliminate within the department so that they could instead allocate the money for employee raises. These employees are paid with enterprise funds, or money that is raised by charging fees for services like utilities or trash.
The proposed changes to the pay plan originally appeared on the Nov. 11 council meeting agenda. Prior to the vote to approve the agenda, Mayor John Ramon Vigil requested items related to the union’s collective bargaining agreement and the updated pay scale be removed. Instead, he recommended that the items be sent to a committee for review prior to coming before the full council.
Reichelt made a comment on Facebook Nov. 12, stating that Vigil was forced to table the discussion “because of a silly movida to make him look bad.”
“At any rate, salaries will be increased and we will just have to hold a lot of pointless meetings to do it,” she wrote.
District 4 City Councilor Samuel LeDoux said he is concerned by Reichelt’s social media post.
He said Reichelt’s comment is an accusation that councilors were bribed to send an agenda item to a committee. He also said that it is important to follow the committee process and the other raises approved this year, such as those for the Española Fire Department, were brought through committee.
During a telephone interview, Reichelt declined to comment about her remarks on Facebook and instead focused on the goal of getting the raises out to employees before the holidays.
She also said she put the item directly on the council meeting agenda without putting it through a committee due to the confidential union negotiations between AFSCME Local 1188 and the city. Committee meetings do not have the option to go into executive session, which means anything related to the confidential conversations would have to be discussed publicly.
For now, Reichelt said, they are looking at ways to give raises to employees whose wages are paid through the enterprise fund. There is not enough money in the General Fund to support raises for other employees.
“I’m starting with those that I can raise, and then I’m trying to find ways to find funding for the others that I’m not able to get to,” she said.
The raises for Public Works employees are also a way to recognize the difficult, and often dangerous, work they do for the city. For example, she said, employees may have to dig trenches during a water main break. There have been deaths in small towns when trenches collapse and crush workers.
“It’s very dangerous and so if your employees don’t have the right training, your supervisor is not properly overseeing, then it can be very dangerous work,” Reichelt said.