Click on the above amendment to see what was submitted to the City Council of Wausau as a response apparently to the brouhaha about pay raises for senior staff. It was submitted by Rosenberg, who is also a member of the Citizen Wausau community (though we hardly hear from him these days), but it ended up getting tabled by some others on the Council. To be honest, by that point I had lost interest in the whole thing and was beginning to make smart remarks to the people around me, à la Mystery Science Theatre.
I have no particular allegiance to Rosenberg, but my thought on this is that at least he gave it a shot. He took time out from his day and, with help from the professional staff, created this sort of compromise to a problem that has been in existence apparently for at least 4 years. The head of the HR Committee has made this a crusade to alter the matrix of these staff people to reflect a raise.
The public outcry has been huge, and clearly ill-defined. Many voices yelling about raises for these PEOPLE, when in fact that is not what is happening. Many people yelling that this will raise your property taxes, when in fact that is not happening as well.
I do not claim to be a genius in this area, but let me see if I am right about what I have learned. Years ago, it was decided that the city pay rates were off at the higher levels. That the leaders and true professionals that guide our city financially and legally were not being properly compensated. So the City Council voted to hire a consultant to compare our wages with other similar cities. According to that data, which Deb Hadley showed by manipulating the numbers, at median levels our employees are fine.
BUT, as attorney Nagel pointed out to Deb Hadley, the employees in question are not in the median range, and based on experience are in the high range, thereby making them underpaid.
This went on for months. The numbers have been shifted, changed, redressed, altered, hoodwinked and bamboozled. All in an attempt to alter this matrix.
Let us be clear about this point: this is not an attempt to give the people in this job a raise. They have the ability to get raises, however the city handles that. I am sure that they get them from time to time. This, though, is an attempt to fix a disparity in the pay matrix for the City of Wausau employee pay scale. Any attempt to make this about these people specifically or talk about THEIR raises is simply an attempt to lead us down the wrong path. It allows for a discussion about what they do to deserve raises, who they are and all that.
The fact is, this is not about them. It is about how we as a city view the professionals who work for us. What sort of people we want guiding our multimillion dollar budget, handling our legal affairs, and leading our fire department. Would we rather them be children, willing to accept 20 grand a year, or would we rather have them be career professionals that will guide us in better ways?
I found the personalization of the attack by Miss Abitz to be disheartening. The discussion of Mary Ann Groat by this alleged letter writer was terrible. I thought it was a blatant slap in the face by this council person toward Ms. Groat. It was a clear personal attack, given voice through the words of a letter writer.
I found the actions of the Taxpayers League, or whoever they were, to be ill thought out. What was the purpose of that speech by that lady? I had never even heard of the group that she is a leader for. But upon a little research it turns out that the Wausau Taxpayers League primary role has been to show up from time to time and say, “You’re spending too much money!” Well fine, that seems like a great position – if our role is to never move forward.
But, I ask this, do we not need to spend money to make progress? What do you collect my taxes for, if not to spend them on the things that this city needs? I think that this city needs a properly adjusted pay matrix, with our professional staff getting paid what others in the field do.
mapletownshrub
2:09 pm on December 13th
I have found the taxpayers league to be a front for the Republican Party of Marathon County. Can anyone name a democrat who’s a member of this organization?
And Dino, did you hear what Ms. Abitz read in that letter about the welfare system? My husband laughed at me when I gasped while watching it on Public access. I was hoping the media would have grabbed on to that.
Jim Rosenberg
2:43 pm on December 13th
Thanks for the discussion. As always, it’s difficult to get people to agree on a solution if we can’t first get people to agree that there is a problem.
To oversimplify this one, we have a pay matrix with some specific problems. Our present structure doesn’t anticipate the possibility of top-level professionals with more than 10 years of experience in their executive positions. A couple of problems, in my view:
1. The matrix doesn’t match the comparable value of several jobs correctly within the context of the entire compensation matrix.
2. The compensation structure for these jobs has been allowed to become somewhat out of line with the general market for comparable positions in these specialties.
In short, we would probably not be able to recruit replacements with similar experience and credentials for those jobs at the compensation levels we have. Of course, we would still have the option of hiring people with lesser qualifications at a point lower in the matrix, but it seems short-sighted to make that the ONLY option. Moreover, we don’t necessarily want to be hiring any replacements any sooner than we would have to. Institutional knowledge is an important intangible asset in these of positions, for example. Maintaining a situation that is more ripe for turnover than it should be fails to anticipate the significant costs and disruptions that such changes could easily entail.
The compromise that I offered is an effort to separate the jobs out from the existing matrix into new salary categories. It provides much more modest increases than the very controversial proposal that was on the table, but creates a better mechanism in which we can view the positions. It creates some headroom and incentive for these positions going forward. I think it’s a sensible approach.
Dino Corvino
2:49 pm on December 13th
Maple…I was sitting in the first row, and nearly fell out of my seat. I wish the media, the traditional media, was more dilligent about this sort of coverage.
Her comments wer terrible.
As far as you Rosenberg…I applaud you for trying. I find the position that this is somehow personal, terrible. i find it laughable that the council is forcing professional staff into untenable positions, and making them into the bad guys.
It is the worst form of patronization. As if these highly trained people are some form of domestic servants. It makes me sick.