COMMENT: Decorah City Council member Andy Carlson has the right suggestion about the city department head wage study

Decorah City Council member Andy Carlson

--by decorahnews.com's Paul Scott

The Decorah City Council's Personnel Committee has embarked on a campaign to make sure the wages city department heads get paid are "fair." 

That's a difficult term to define.  The committee got off to a good start this week when it decided to get the figures on what 15 similar communities in Iowa pay their city administrators (http://www.decorahnews.com/news-stories/2016/06/13893.html)  It's always good to have some facts upon which to base a decision--and finding out what similar communities pay is a good first step.

The Personnel Committee also discussed what it would do with those figures when it got them.  A number of committee members said they wanted Decorah to be in the 60th percentile of the range of pay other communities provide.  That's a policy decision, which is what city council members are called upon to make.

But the final decision involved how long it will take to do the salary reviews.  Most committee members agreed the review should be spread over three years, which brought up the question of which of the city's eight department to review first.  "Water Department, Sewer Department and Wastewater Treatment Plant," "City Administration," "Police and Fire," "Street Department" came the suggestion, prompting City Council member Gary Rustad to caution against playing favorites.

That's when City Council member Andy Carlson got the discussion back on track by suggesting that the information about salaries in the 15 other cities be gathered first and then the City of Decorah departments that lagged the most behind the average could be tackled first.

Carlson deserves praise for reminding the city council how this process should be handled--it should be based on facts and not whether city council members like a particular administrator or not.