CITY HOPES TO HIKE SALARIES

The city of Cape Girardeau has a New Year's resolution: bring employee salaries closer in line with Missouri cities of comparable size.

As preliminary work begins on the 1997-98 fiscal year budget, city administrators plan to alter the traditional budget process to give employee raises greater importance.

Melvin Gateley has been one of the most vocal members of the Cape Girardeau City Council on the issue of employee salaries.

"From my background working with employees in public schools, I know employees are our greatest asset," Gateley said. "We are fortunate in the city of Cape Girardeau to have a great work force."

Compensation for city employees should be in line with other Missouri cities of similar size that provide similar services, said Gately.

"Surely it can be possible to compensate employees at least on an equitable basis," Gately said.

A report comparing compensation of Cape Girardeau city employees to those in other municipalities was presented to the City Council in September. The report was compiled by a task force on compensation composed of city department heads.

A compilation of six salary surveys for 50 job positions in 16 Missouri cities showed that salaries for Cape Girardeau employees are 8.3 percent below the average. Total personnel costs would have to be increased $1.1 million for the city to meet the survey average.

However, many of those cities are in or near large metropolitan areas where the cost of living is higher, skewing the survey data.

To get a better idea of where Cape Girardeau ranks, the report was further narrowed to four Missouri cities that, like Cape Girardeau, are regional centers in their areas.

Compared to those cities -- Jefferson City, Joplin, Sedalia and St. Joseph -- Cape Girardeau lags approximately 4 percent behind the average with a $508,560 shortfall.

Mayor Al Spradling III said city employees are due a raise. In addition to improving morale, it would help keep the city from losing good workers to higher-paying jobs, he said.

The largest difference in salaries is in the police and fire departments, Spradling said.

"We have a had a high attrition rate in those departments. After four or five years, they go on to higher-paying departments," Spradling said.

Police Chief Richard Hetzel said 15 officers have left the department in the last two years. Of those five retired and eight went on to other law enforcement agencies, including two to the FBI and one to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

Hetzel, who just took over leadership of the department this week, is encouraged that the city plans to take action on salaries. "For any city, recruiting and retaining the best qualified people it can is vital, and salaries certainly are important," Hetzel said.

The report also showed that those four cities gave employees an average 2.5 percent cost-of-living increase per year.

Cape Girardeau gave employees a 1 percent across-the-board cost-of-living adjustment at the beginning of the current fiscal year in July. It was the first such increase since 1990.

City employees do receive annual merit-pay increases ranging from 2 to 4 percent.

All data in the report was from the 1995-96 fiscal year and may not reflect an additional 2.5 percent increase for the 1996-97 fiscal year. Such an increase would put Cape Girardeau 5 to 7 percent behind the four selected cities in compensation.

Among the compensation team's recommendations to eliminate the disparity is for salaries to be considered up front in the budget process. Traditionally, salaries have been the last item to be addressed.

City Manager Micheal Miller said the compensation team is preparing a salary proposal to be included in the earliest stages of budget deliberations.

"Once they do that, we'll slip it into the proposed budget and weigh it against other items competing for city dollars," Miller said.

When formulating the budget, each department head submits a list of needs. When the dollar cost of the needs for each department are added up, proposed expenses usually exceed revenues. That leads to cutting item not considered needed.

In the past, what was left after the cutting went for salary increases. Generally, not much was left.

"If you don't even look at salaries until you've gone ahead and done a lot of cutting in the budget, salary increases really become a less desirable thing to do," Miller said.

For the 1997-98 fiscal year, salary increases will be treated as one of the primary budget needs.

It won't be known if the city's salary goals can be attained this year until the budget team gets down to examining proposals. The raises may have to be implemented over the course of several fiscal years.

"It depends ultimately on how much money is available," Miller said.

A proposed budget is expected to be assembled and submitted to the City Council in May.