2023-07-11 Salary Commission Minutes

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Salary Commission July 11, 2023 CHR. PAVAO: Yeah, I think that the conversation around budget comes up every time the salary commission has convened in the past. I see it in the previous minutes. And, although we should be cognizant of that, it's not in the Charter—our responsibility to pay attention to the budget. Our responsibility is to do due diligence and to make salary raises according as to what we think is acceptable. There's six of the nine of us vote to approve the salary raises that's the law. The county council, the mayor—nobody else gets to veto or approve it. We make the final decision. But—so, I remember reading in the minutes that one of the salary commissioners asked Mayor Kim when he was here before the commission—"We're going to approve this. Is there money in the budget to cover these raises? And his response is—it's not your concern. You pass the salary raises. It's my concern to find the money to pay the raises." MS. GREENBAUM: Commissioner Greenbaum to Commissioner Nakama, I believe the reason for the large increase, if I recall correctly, and I wasn't on the Commission in 2018. But I came thereafter—and they had mentioned that it had to do with 10 years of no increase. And from 2008 to 2018—it was 10I believe 5 to 10 years of no increase, which caused that higher increase to be proposed. I don't know what they ended up with, but that was the reason for the higher increase proposal. And that's something I would hope we don't encounter because of delays. CHR. PAVAO: I think that we're almost in a similar situation because it's been a number of years. MS. GREENBAUM: Correct. CHR. PAVAO: One of the things that we try to consider—and I know there was some previous discussion even the last meeting—is some process of step movements because, if we just make an increase now and the Salary Commission doesn't convene for another 3, 4, 5, years you end up with the same situation. And it gets harder and harder for the County to recruit and retain the best employees because even, like public works, you get a new mayor—some of the best employees for that director position are within the department. But an engineer in public works is going to refuse the appointment because they're going to take a big pay cut, which is now they're going to have an impact on their current salary but has a long-term impact on their retirement. The same problem happened with the current recruitment for the chief. I asked people in the department and my response was thatoh, from captains and majors up make more than their current chiefs, so why would be apply for that job? So, it becomes an issue with recruiting and retaining staff. But—so, hopefully, we can come up with an appropriate salary schedule now but something that can see increases. Because even when you talk about collective bargaining, the bargaining units have contracts. Most of them that expire July 1st well, July 1" '25 is the last pay increase, but—so if they get 4 percent now, Page 27