Prince George city hall is going through a lot of changes, and another item that has come under the microscope as of late is city employee compensation.
At last night’s council meeting (Dec. 7), the city was presented a comprehensive compensation survey to determine and assess market conditions for exempt employee compensations.
This survey was prepared at the request of Coun. Kyle Sampson after a resolution was passed during the Sept. 24 meeting.
The city contracted with Sainas Consult Inc. to conduct a survey of its management compensation structure, vacation and overtime considerations, and other elements of total compensation.
The survey used 10 comparator municipalities including Chilliwack, Coquitlam, Delta, Kamloops, Kelowna, Nanaimo, Victoria, North Vancouver, Saanich and Langley.
The survey found that the city’s nine payband were generally on par with comparison municipalities ranging from 88 per cent of the median to 105 per cent of the median, depending on paygrade.
However, when council discussed this report around the horseshoe, Coun. Terri McConnachie said the report was very high-level and would prefer deeper comparison moving forward.
“I think its important people know that council does see that’s as part as our exercise of oversight especially when it comes to budgeting,” said McConnachie.
“Wages are a large part of our annual budget and it is all in an effort to ensure that we are fair.”
Acting city manager Walter Babicz has outlined further steps the city will be taking, including approving a revised Exempt Overtime Procedure to be effective Jan. 1, which will prohibit the city’s ability to pay management overtime during an emergency.
The procedure that existed during the 2017 and 2018 wildfire evacuation events allowed overtime claims by all levels of management staff when involved in supervising emergency events, with specific entitlements related to events falling under the Provincial Emergency Act and payable by the province.
The new revised Exempt Employee Overtime Procedure prohibits the City Manager, General Managers and Directors from claiming overtime, regardless of the circumstance. In other words, those positions may not claim overtime in connection with emergency events
Also to financial challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s management/exempt employees will not receive a cost-of-living increase in 2020 or 2021.
“It took a motion in September to trigger this report to come back when it should have automatically come back [to council] anyways or this report would have not seen the light of day,” said Coun. Sampson.
He then made a motion to amend the policy to include that the survey be completed and sent back to council every three years.
Babicz, because of council’s feedback regarding the existing policy and the need for more information regarding the comparisons, suggested tasking city staff with creating an amendment to the overall policy that would address a number of council’s suggestions.
The motion to have city staff create an overall amendment to the Exempt Employee Compensation and Conditions of Employment Policy and return it to council for approval was passed unanimously by council.
