first on decorahnews.com: Other Decorah city department heads may also be getting pay raises

Decorah City Administrator Chad Bird might not be the only city department head to get a substantial pay raise in the future.

The Decorah City Council earlier this month approved an $18,197 raise for Bird, starting July 1st.  decorahnews.com has learned that the city council's Personnel Committee has begun a process of studying whether other department heads are getting paid enough money.

Of course, "enough" is a difficult term to define.  So the first step in the committee's process is to determine what comparisons should be made.  Bird and City Clerk Wanda Hemesath have been asked to draw up a list of similar cities—cities of roughly the same population and city government organization as Decorah.

Those "comparables" will be presented at the next Personnel Committee—without salaries attached.  Then the committee will discuss in general terms whether it wants department head salaries in Decorah to fall in the top, middle or bottom of salaries paid by those comparable cities.

Once the overall framework for wages has been established, work will begin to collect figures about the actual salaries paid in those communities.  Personnel Committee members want to tackle several department head salary reviews each year, completing the process in a three- or four-year time period.