City Employees Pay

The city staff presented their methodology at the last city council workshop by which they propose to adjust city employee pay levels. The basic methods is to compare "like" jobs with similar cities in Texas. Those cities in close proximity are: Austin, Cedar Park, Leander, Pflugerville, Round Rock and Williamson County. Other similar sized cities considered are: San Marcos, New Braunfels, Sugar Land, Grapevine, Denton and Flower Mound.

The primary issue with this method is that essentially if all cities use this method, the pay scales keep ratcheting up as each city tries to keep up with the "average city" and keep nearby cities from poaching their employees. There is no relationship between pay and actual work performed or value added for the city.

Other flaws in the method are a result of the inability to accurately construct 1:1 comparisons for individual jobs. The responsibilities and work tasks for a library assistant in different cities are most likely different to some degree.  Also each city may have a different retirement system which can affect the pay that an employee is willing to accept for a given job. Similarly, each city may have a different health benefit system which could also affect pay rates.

Finally, each city likely has different costs of living. For example, it is likely more expensive for an Austin city employee to live in Austin than it is for a Georgetown city employee to live in Georgetown. No adjustment for cost of living variations has been included in the methodology.

There are a host of problems with using this kind of methodology to set city employee pay. In the longer term a method that relates pay to the actual job and employee performance needs to be developed.

Idle musing! What does the private sector use to set pay levels?