$18,187 a year pay raise to Decorah's City Administrator continues to draw a response

(Boy, Mr. Answer Person was relaxing in his hammock, enjoying this spring's weather, when the e-mail inbox started getting flooded with questions from readers about the $18,187 a year pay raise the Decorah City Council gave last Monday night to Decorah City Administrator Chad Bird.  Thanks, Samantha, Jan, Marcia, Jamie, Ellen and several others who had questions.  Let's try to tackle some of them, although we're still working on some others):

"How did the city council come to agree that an $18,197 pay raise is justified for the city Manager?  This equates to nearly a $9 hour pay raise!" "How it is possible that such a raise is warranted?"  "What exactly did Mr. Bird do to deserve such a raise?"

Mr. Answer Person says, "The pay raise was given to the City Manager to keep his salary "competitive" with salaries offered by other cities.  So what do other communities pay their City Administrators?  It's a little difficult to come up with an absolute answer.  The Iowa League of Cities tells decorahnews.com that they do not compile such figures.  An Internet search by decorahnews.com came up with North Liberty paying their City Administrator $115,063 a year as of 2013; Urbandale paying $157,288 a year as of 2014; and Dyersville paying $92,170 a year as of 2105.
 
The website www.salarygenius.com has figures about what the average salary for a city administrator in Iowa should be and says, for instance, that "The average yearly salary for City Manager in Waverly, Iowa is $68,628."
 
That seemed a little low, so decorahnews.com contacted City of Waverly officials—who say their new City Administrator hired in January is getting paid $115,000 a year plus a $3,000 a year gas allowance.  That would be just a little less than the $115,809 a year the City of Decorah will be paying Chad Bird come July 1st.  He will have worked for the City of Decorah for nearly five years when his pay raise goes into effect.

"Does this (pay raise) have anything to do with the fact that Mr. Bird is looking for a new job?" asks one reader.

Actually, to the best of Mr. Answer Person's knowledge, Decorah City Administrator Chad Bird is NOT looking for a job.  He DID apply for the Waverly City Administrator job five months ago because he has many relatives in Waverly--but did not land the job.

"Did the city council say what justifies such a huge (almost 20 percent) pay increase?"

An interesting question.  City officials were very willing to answer decorahnews.com's questions last Monday night about this resolution, but it does seem an attempt was made to have this item be presented in as low key a manner as possible.

The city council held a meeting as a Personnel Committee at 7:00 a.m. Monday, April 11th that started with a closed door session but also included an item described as "Discussion of a wage and market comparable policy."  There was no mention on the agenda of "City Administrator's pay raise" or anything similar. 

On the original agenda for the Monday, April 18th, city council meeting there was no mention of a City Administrator's pay raise.  An amended agenda was submitted Monday night that included Resolution #2726 "Amending the established compensation range for Pay Grade 13 and establishing staffing level for (2016-2017)."  Again, the words "City Administrator" and "salary increase" were not included in the wording.

"Does this (pay raise) equal the percentage (pay raise) that the employees received from the city?"

Mr. Answer Person says, "The city employees' AFSME union members just signed a three-year contract with the city in March."  We'll get more details about that contract in a future column—including an answer to your question of whether union members got 19 percent pay raises  (Mr. Answer Person is leaning strongly to "no, they didn't.").