T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA St. Clairsville council member Mike Kasper in center, says council needs to put the longstanding issue of a pay raise for all non-elected and non-unioned employees behind it. Council members Kristi Lipscomb, to his right, and Lucian Murzyn sits on his left.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE – St. Clairsville City Council once again mulled over the possibility of increasing the yearly compensation of city employees.

On Monday evening, council had its first reading of an ordinance that would see all non-elected and nonunion employees receive a 3% raise.

“Council has been going through this for four or five years now,” council member Mike Kasper said.

He added that he would like to see all of the non-elected and nonunion employees get to the same level before increasing raises by 3% across the board.

“Let’s get everybody across the board raises up, and let’s sit down and discuss this with the state one more time and then we can proceed from there. We can go ahead and whatever the wage is then make decisions,” Kasper said.

Council member Audrey Brahler replied that what she would like to see is a piece of legislation with an official document as an exhibit that lists job titles with their pay scales.

She then asked Law Director Joe Vavra if that would be something he could have written up for the next meeting.

Vavra replied that he just needs the committee to provide him those pay scales because he has not seen them.

“We can’t just start with the 3% across the board, because we want to get people to their pay scale first,” Brahler said.

Kasper added that the city currently has one department whose pay scale is below 89%.

Both Kasper and Brahler agreed that it doesn’t make sense to give everyone a 3% raise without getting everyone to a 90% pay scale first.

“That’s why I don’t want to give them a 3% raise before they’re at their pay scale,” Brahler said.

“And I think that the second piece of legislation we need is that any department, any job title that’s below the set pay scale we just established, bring them up to the 90% mark. And then the third piece of legislation we can do is an across-the-board raise.”

Council member Don Vincenzo said that the city’s HR consultant, Lenny Hannigan, would be able to help council straighten out all of the details of raising the percentages to an even playing field.

“That’s what Lenny will help straighten out. I can do a call this week. It may take a year or two, but our goal is to get everybody that’s working to be at 100% of that pay scale,” Vincenzo said.

He added that in previous conversations with Hannigan, he suggested doing a 2% raise each year and then every two to three years having council review and make changes the budget allows.

Vavra said that he believes council will need to pass multiple pieces of legislation to adopt those guidelines or procedures.

“You could then do another legislation to adjust whatever positions you want to adjust that need to be increased, and then, if you want that across-the-board raise based on those figures, you can do it in one meeting,” Vavra said.

Council member Kristi Lipscomb said that she believes this debate over whether to raise the yearly compensation of non-elected and nonunion employees has been going on for too long, with the rest of council agreeing.

“It’s time for all this to be done and put on the back burner,” Kasper added.

Council then agreed that it would like to see a piece of legislation with an official document as an exhibit that lists job titles and employee pay scales.