Raises of 4% for appointed and elected officials and employees of the city of Seymour for 2024 have been approved.

During Monday night’s Seymour Common Council meeting in the council chambers at city hall, the votes for both salary ordinances were 6-1 with Bret Cunningham casting the lone nay vote.

Both ordinances were amended before the final vote.

For the appointed officials and employees, the change related to the salary structure for the police chief based on the person previously in that role and their longevity incentive. Clerk-Treasurer Darrin Boas said that decreased a little bit for the current chief.

For the elected officials, Boas said there was a $300 addition error in the mayor’s salary on the original version of the ordinance.

Also before the final vote, Councilman Drew Storey, who attended the meeting virtually, wanted to get the council’s thoughts on developing a strategy to make sure low performers aren’t awarded the same raise as high performers. A year ago, the council discussed restructuring the way across-the-board raises are given to employees.

Councilman Seth Davidson asked if performance pay had been discussed during department head meetings, and Mayor Matt Nicholson said salaries are among the topics of conversation. The mayor said some salaries have a pay range, and the problem is when a person gets to the top of the range, where do you go from there?

Councilman Jerry Hackney, who as chairman of the finance committee introduced the ordinances, said at a company he previously worked at, when a person reached the top of the pay scale, instead of giving them an increase, they were given a bonus.

“It might be something we want to look at, but it’s too late in the year to do it now,” he said.

Nicholson asked Boas to check with the State Board of Accounts about bonuses.

Boas said when you have some employees represented by a union, like police officers and firefighters, and the rest of the city is not, that makes it a challenge to hold part of the city government to a different standard than the rest.

“It kind of muddies the water somewhat,” he said. “I’ve been in that environment, and it makes it challenging, and you get a lot of frustration from both sides because of it.”

Storey said some state agencies have seen success with a performance pay structure, and he asked if the city’s governmental affairs or finance committee could look at that for the 2024 budget cycle. Hackney said there’s a member of the governmental affairs committee on the finance committee, so finance would be willing to look at it.

“It’s more of the feasibility of coming up with some sort of performance-based incentive through raises or whatnot, not the criteria of that performance,” city attorney Christina Engleking told the council.

When Hackney asked for comments from the audience, Water Pollution Control Assistant Director Doug Gregory stepped up to the podium.

“Every one of our guys is under a salary ordinance that’s got a bracket they go by,” he said. “Just because we hire one today, he doesn’t go to the top of the scale. We do set goals for those guys to hit before we pay them top of scale.”

Seymour Parks and Recreation Department Director Stacy Findley also spoke.

She said her staff members are lumped into one general job classification, so they all make the same pay rate even though some may have more skills than others.

“The amount of money that our skilled laborers save the city is astronomical because we do have those skilled laborers, but they are all lumped together, all same job requirements,” she said. “It makes it tricky for us where within that job description, over the years lumped together, we don’t have an accurate description of what that position is and all you do outside of that job description.”

The maintenance laborers could make a lot more money elsewhere, but they choose to work for the city because of the positive work culture, Findley said.

“I think I’ve been very intentional in my tenure since 2020 to improve that positive work culture,” she said. “I think it’s difficult to do a KPI (key performance indicator) when it pertains to skill set because it’s something that I have done my research on also. I think there’s a certain way to do a matrix of scoring, but then also as department heads, I feel we should be trusted to hire the best people possible for the job, which I feel we do.”

The public comments were followed by votes on both ordinances. The raises will go into effect at the start of 2024.