2025-12-22 Salary Commission Minutes

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Salary Commission December 22, 2025 And when some of us came on initially, we had the same kind of notion that maybe we should be bringing the department heads in here and interviewing them and checking their performance— but the Charter’s very specific. The appointing authority has the responsibility of measuring performance. So, the Mayor would be the appointing authority of all the department heads and deputy directors—and it’s his responsibility. The same thing would be true of the Fire Commission and the Police Commission—they are the appointing authorities. It’s their role to measure performance—not our role—the Charter does not give us that power authority. Exactly what Commissioner Namahoe said is that for many years—seven or eight years—none of the appointed and elected officials had raises because this Commission was dormant. In the meantime, all the collective bargaining units—HGEA, UPW, SHOPO, and the fire fighters—all got raises, so there was an imbalance where deputy directors—I mean, section heads, supervisors, even in the Police Department—the assistant chiefs and even the majors and captains were making more than the deputy chief. In some areas, in some positions, were making more than the head of the department. So, what we did—that big raise that people would look at, was to get parity so that you could fill positions, so the Police Department is a good example. No one would take the deputy chief’s job because the assistant chiefs and the majors were making more that the deputy chief—only when this body approved those pay raises, they finally filled the deputy chief’s position. So, it’s a major issue the County has had with filling vacant positions—Public Works and other departments where engineering degrees are required—they’ve really struggled to fill positions because subordinates in that—in those departments, were making more than the deputy director. So, I think that the Commission are proud of the work that we’ve done. We’ve done the best job. We put a lot of research in working through it. We’ve looked at cost of living, we looked at the salaries—increases that the collective bargaining units were making—and I think we’ve made an informed and educated decision. Thank you. Any further discussion? MR. RIORDAN: This is Commissioner Riordan. And I’d like to speak to the appointing authority and say that we’re meeting our burden of keeping up with wages for the people that we’re in charge of, and the Unions are taking care of their folks. But there’s a group of County employees out there that no one’s representing. And it’s up to the mayor to make sure that those folks get the salary increases that they should get because they’re falling behind, which is what we don’t want happening. And, if at some point in time later on, we—the County has to ask everyone to take a pay cut for a period of time, they’re going to fall even further behind because they never got an increase when everyone else has been increa— getting increases during this time. Page 11