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The San Ramon City Council is poised to vote Tuesday on pay increases for the city manager and police chief in order to address wage compression issues that have arisen following the latest agreement between the city and the police union.
The move comes following a previous measure aimed at addressing salary compaction within the San Ramon Police Department, with the council approving 5% pay increases for SRPD lieutenants in order to maintain a pay differential between that position and police sergeant positions, with sergeants seeing a top-step pay that exceeded that for police lieutenants following the latest union agreement.
That measure, however, led to additional cases of wage compaction, with the top-step salary for police lieutenants – $265,297.24 – now exceeding that for police captain and police chief, set at $239,288.14 and $250,973.84 respectively.Â
City staff are recommending that the council approve a resolution that would raise the top step salary for the police captain and police chief positions by 7.5% and 10% respectively, while eliminating incentive pay for those positions. The move would bring the top step salary for police captain to $285,194.52, and the top step for police chief to $313,713.92.
With all lieutenants in the department currently being paid at the top step of the salary range – which is $265,297.24 as of the latest union agreement – staff are recommending that the police captain and chief also be placed in the top step established in the proposed resolution at the upcoming meeting.
However, this move would create further salary compression without additional pay increases for other positions, which are also being proposed in the resolution on the table Tuesday. With Police Chief Denton Carlson also being considered a department director, and with City Manager Steven Spedowfski’s contract requiring a 5.5% pay differential between his position and the highest paid department director – which would be eliminated by the proposed pay increase for Carlson – staff are also recommending a 5.5% pay increase for Spedowfski, which would put his salary at $330,968.30 annually.
The resolution is also set to include pay schedule adjustments for the city engineer, assistant city attorney and deputy city manager positions, discussions which were previously “deferred while the City conducted an organizational assessment and analyzed the impacts of the MOU between the City and the POA,” according to the staff report prepared by human resources manager Megan O’Donoghue for the upcoming meeting.
The San Ramon City Council is set to meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday (Nov. 26). The agenda is available here.
In other businesses, the council is set to vote on a proposed resolution that would add an assistant city manager position following an “organizational assessment”, according to a staff report on that item from O’Donoghue.
“The City identified an immediate need for an Assistant City Manager for two critical needs: 1. to increase oversight of the City’s finances and other key operational areas, and 2. alleviate the City Manager’s span of control (currently twelve (12) positions),” O’Donoghue wrote.
Staff are recommending that the council approve the addition of the assistant city manager title and fill the position as soon as possible, with an annual salary range between $227,815.90 and $303,677.92.
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