Aldermen approve extension for citywide pay and classification study
May 22—Aldermen voted unanimously this week to extend the deadline to complete a comprehensive study of Manchester city employees' pay another year, despite a committee recommendation to scrap the effort.
Members of the Committee on Community Improvement voted 3-2 earlier this month to receive and file a request from Lisa Drabik, the city's human resources director, to extend the end date for the study to June 30, 2026. In favor were Aldermen Chris Morgan, Ross Terrio and Crissy Kantor. Opposed were Pat Long and James Burkush.
The study, funded by the city's special revenue reserve account, is a review and analysis of the current staff compensation structure — known around the city as "Yarger-Decker," after the consulting firm that developed it.
The study is expected to contain recommendations for improvements to ensure "internal equity and external competitiveness," according to a 2022 memo from former Mayor Joyce Craig to aldermen requesting funding for the project.
A vote to receive and file the committee recommendation to kill the study passed 13-0, with Alderman Kelly Thomas absent. Board members then voted 13-0 to extend the deadline to June 30, 2025.
The votes followed a presentation by Drabik that featured an overview of the study for newer board members, a description of work completed thus far and what remains to be done — and her reasoning behind requesting an extension for the project in the first place.
"In other words, I viewed it as simply an administrative detail," Drabik said. "There was no intent to delay the study, the results, or anything associated with this project.
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Evergreen Solutions, a national firm based in Tallahassee, Florida, was selected last June from a field of four finalists who responded to a request for proposals by the city to complete the study.
Evergreen had proposed an eight-month timeline to complete the study and anticipated having preliminary pay recommendations and cost scenarios to the city in December 2023 or January 2024, in time for the city's budget process.
In 2023, aldermen authorized spending up to $750,000 on the study. All staff positions are included in the study.
Drabik said work on the study is about 65% complete, with about $250,000 of the $750,000 spent thus far. Work began last August.
High turnover rate
A presentation on the work completed to date is expected to be given to aldermen sometime in September.
Drabik said the hope is to get some feel regarding support for potential pay increases ahead of contract negotiations scheduled to begin this fall. Ten of the city's 13 contracts with unionized employees expire June 30, 2025, Drabik said.
One of the goals of the study is to improve recruitment and retention among municipal employees in Manchester, Drabik said. As of May 1, the city had 239 vacancies, with 282 employees eligible to retire.
For years the city enjoyed a low turnover rate among employees, ranging between 7.3% and 4.1% from Fiscal year 2017 to FY 2019.
That figure surged to 17.7% in FY '21 and 21.1% in FY '22. Through April, it sits at 18.3% for FY '24, Drabik said.
Alderman Dan O'Neil said it is important to complete the study and "give some potential hope to the employees."
Following the two board votes, Alderman Pat Long made a surprising motion to reconsider, then asked the board to reject his motion. Because an item can only be brought up for reconsideration once, this means the matter can't be revisited down the road.
"This ends it here today," Long said.
The reconsideration vote failed on a 2-11 vote, with aldermen Joe Kelly Levasseur and Ed Sapienza in favor of the motion.
The way city jobs are classified and employees are paid and reviewed for raises changed in 1999, with the implementation of an employee reclassification study, developed with the help of consultant Yarger-Decker Associates.
The employee reclassification system introduced performance and skill as factors in determining raises. Before that, city employees received raises based strictly on seniority.
The need for a classification and compensation study was raised a few years ago by now-retired city Human Resources Director Kathleen Ferguson.
Ferguson at the time said that thanks to collective bargaining efforts, the original Yarger-Decker scale had morphed into multiple scales, creating inequities between city employees with similar job functions.
