The Human Resources and Information Technology Committee met 10/11/2023. During that meeting they voted on salary increases for the positions of the City Attorney and the Mayor for the 2024 term. Both of these positions are elected positions and their 4-year terms begin May 1, 2024.
For each of these positions, Human Resources Director Jay Ratchman proposed doing a one-time 3% lift at the start of the 2024 term as well as a 3% annual increase for 2024. This would result in a 6% increase to the positions’ salaries in May of 2024 which would help them maintain parity with the other director-level positions in the city. For 2025, 2026, and 2027, the remaining 3 years of their terms, Director Ratchman proposed a 2% annual salary increase. In 2027, the City Attorney would end up making $156,511.41 and the mayor would make $120,083.87.
The committee voted unanimously to approve each of the items, with some committee members indicating they believed providing adequate compensation was important to attracting competent people to run for the positions.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download.
Director Ratchman explained that setting the salaries for these positions was difficult because they needed to be set 4 years in advance and they didn’t know what the market was going to do. The 2020 compensation was set based on the prior four years and included a 2% increase for the next three years. There had been general parity between the rate of the salary increases between the City Attorney position and the other non-elected director-level positions up until 2023. However, in 2023, the City Attorney only received a 2% increase while the other director-level positions received a 5% increase.
For that reason, Director Ratchman wanted to do a one-time lift of 3% in 2024 for the City Attorney to bring the rate of increase up to the level of other director positions and then also increase the compensation by an additional 3% to be in line with the proposed 3% compensation increase for all non-union city employees. After that initial 6% increase, he was recommending an annual increase of 2% in 2025, 2026, and 2027.
For both positions, Director Ratchman had included salary comparison data from surrounding municipalities. This information came from a shared Google Doc that the other municipalities, in partnership, filled in. It wasn’t clear how often all the municipalities updated the information in the document. Additionally, the positions varied markedly from municipality to municipality. City attorneys were elected positions in some cities and appointed positions in others. Some cities had elected mayor, some had city managers, and some had city administrators. Additionally, the ancillary benefits for the positions varied markedly from city to city.
The committee voted unanimously to approve the salary structures for both positions for 2024-2027. Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6) believed it was pretty clear that an attorney could make a lot more money in private practice than working in a municipal position. Alderpersons Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) and Chris Croatt (District 14) both felt that it was important to make sure compensation for the City Attorney position was decent in order to attract competent people to run for the job.
Regarding the increase salary for the mayor’s position, Alderperson Hartzheim stated, “[I]t’s important to me to serve my constituency by saying we should pare back any kind of excess costs in the city, but in this particular situation, I believe that this director position warrants good pay, and so I think that this is a fair structure that’s been presented by Director Ratchman.”
Alderperson Patrick Hayden (District 7) piggy-backed off of her comment and said, “I just wanted to add on that it doesn’t just warrant it, it kind of needs it. Because we need high skilled people to be the city attorney and high skilled people to be the mayor. And without adequate pay, these people would easily go to the private sector where they could easily make double this.”
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1120410&GUID=E453A1B9-17F9-4BB9-85D9-5C4B9C0A6BCA
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