2024-08-27 Salary Commission Minutes

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Salary Commission August 27, 2024 CHR. PAVAO: The interim salary was set by the County Council? MS. FRENZ: This is DCC Cody. I don't believe so. I don't know if that was with Department of Human Resources and/or the Mayor's Office or County Council. I don't recall how that original—maybe Director Tokihiro could chime in. MS. TOKIHIRO: Yes. It was a combination of Human Resources and the Mayor's Office established that salary. CHR. PAVAO: Yeah. Then that salary was set some time ago. So, again, the other issue that we did consider was the collective bargaining unions and all the raises they have received over that timeframe, including up until July 1st of 2024, where they just got another raise. So, that was also a part of the consideration in our decision-making. But I think that the major issue is equity and parity—all department heads of similar size departments—are at one salary range. And here you have someone that's in a very disparate salary range it wouldn't be equitable, in my mind, to have a salary so different from other similar sized departments. MR. NELSON: This is Nelson. Yeah, I agree, I think it's an equity issue because if you look at the Director of Sustainability, the salaries are all over the place on the governments salaries. Last night when I looked at it, it's a lot lower than what we're offering—some are a lot higher for the private sector. So, they're all over the place. So, I think, really, the salary that you guys are looking at is the same as to try to make it equitable with the other department heads. I think that's the main rationale. I don't know the position the salaries are all over the place, really, for what this job does. CHR. PAVAO: That was a major decision-making—it was about equity and the equity would the cost of living and inflation and equity with—and in parity with the raises that the collective bargaining agents received—and then, here, we're looking at the equity with positions department directors in similar sized departments. MS. KAWA`AUHAU: Commissioner Kawa`auhau. So, what's difficult for me is that I don't know what rationale was used to set the salary for the interim person. I don't know what was used so I can't compare it to what we're using—and I don't know how to do that without knowing the rationale. But using our rationale and our model this is where it would land. So, just being equitable to what we've done in the past with the other positions, and treating this position like those positions, it would seem that we should treat it the same way, which is 162,540 `cause it's equitable. It's the same as Director of Research and Development and (inaudible) similar and County Auditor—and that's the two salaries that we have here, that we've adjusted already for inflationary changes. Page 11