InstantnewsBellaire.com

The City of Bellaire will soon vote on an employee compensation proposal based on a presentation made to council this week by The Waters Consulting Group. The proposal will be presented to council at one of the three meetings before the end of the year, with a planned January 2009 implementation.

The consulting group began an extensive study of the city’s compensation plan in June of this year. The study included comparison of Bellaire’s pay structure to the structures of competing cities and appropriate job classification and rank. Comparison cities included West U., Missouri City, Houston, Sugar Land and Pearland among others.

The Waters Consulting Group found that the actual salaries of all positions, excluding the police and fire departments, were 2 percent above average. The public safety positions were 2 percent below. The current salary ranges, from entry level minimum to the maximum pay, were 3 percent below for general positions and 9 percent below for public safety positions.

The consulting group has recommended that the city pull the fire and police departments from the general pay structure, and based their recommendations on that happening. Public safety positions tend to “move faster” in the market than general positions, so while one year the general employee population may see a 3 percent adjustment, the police and fire departments may need a 5 percent adjustment.

While a new minimum and maximum range will be proposed, employees over the maximum range will not see a salary decrease, but Waters representatives recommend their salaries be ‘frozen’ until the market catches up with them.

The proposed implementation includes an adjusted pay structure, increasing the pay of 30 employees to the new minimum range, and the move of 117 employees to the closest ‘step’ in the compensation plan. This would result in an average salary increase of 2.7 percent, and cost the city an estimated $198,482.