By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Warsaw City Council eventually got to the point Monday night of approving all four of the 2024 salary ordinances on first reading, but only after some discussion on wages for the IT Governance Committee and a deputy clerk.

Warsaw Common Council President Jack Wilhite reads his notes regarding his concerns for a pay increase for an employee in the clerk-treasurer’s office for 2024. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

Wages for the committee and deputy clerk both fall under the general salary ordinance.

On the setting of salaries, Mayor Joe Thallemer read Indiana code that covers them. The salary ordinance is not a budget but the maximum allowed for each of the prescribed positions in the ordinance.

“The city’s legislative body (the council) shall by ordinance fix the annual compensation of all elected city officials, so that’s your role and responsibility,” he said. “The city executive shall fix compensation of each appointed officer, which means department heads, deputies and other employees of the city. The legislative body of the city may reduce but may not increase any compensation fixed by the executive. This (IC) section does not apply to compensation paid by the city to members of the police and fire departments.”

A city clerk, with the approval of the legislative body, fix the salaries of deputies and employees appointed under the statute.

On the general salary ordinance, Human Resource Director Denny Harlan explained, “What I did was I compared all of our positions across the board in every department with 19 other communities that had a population between 10,000 and 20,000 and were considered Class 3 cities. That was the most fair way that I could find to get as close as comparable to what we can.”

He said the biggest majority of all of the city’s positions are “spot on,” but there were a few positions that were a little bit lower than “what we want to see them” and “below the average of those 20 cities.” The majority of those being the city of Warsaw’s administrative assistant positions, four women in the clerk’s department, electricians, the Parks Department supervisor, the Street Department superintendent assistant, wastewater supervisors and also laborers so they were given more than the proposed 3% wage increase for 2024.

Councilwoman Cindy Dobbins asked if the IT Governance Committee members were still paid $5,000 stipends or was that $5,000 added to their annual salaries. Harlan said three of the four committee members had that added to their job description two years ago when Jennifer Whitaker was the HR director so their wages reflect that stipend so they don’t get a stipend on top of their annual salary. The fourth committee member — Airport Manager Nick King — still gets the stipend because the city didn’t want to add that duty of serving on the committee into the airport manager’s job description. King is serving on the committee because he has an IT skillset the committee can use, but a future airport manager, if King should ever leave, may not and the airport manager’s first priority is the airport, Thallemer said.

The other three committee members — the mayor’s assistant, the systems controller and the GIS coordinator — have the $5,000 in their salary — not as a stipend — because the committee is part of their job description, Thallemer said.

After the council moved on from that, Councilman Josh Finch asked Harlan about how the city’s retention rate has been over the last couple years.

Harlan replied he sent out an email last week to the city’s department heads that “the average turnover rate for a government municipality is about 20%. So far this year, here in the city of Warsaw, we’re under 5%. We’re at 4.8%. We’ve lost 12 people, and four of those were retirements and I don’t include retirements against us because I think that’s something to celebrate, not hold against us. So we’re under 5% and that’s a big part from what you guys have done with wages and also what our department heads are doing to build a culture that people want to be here with us and not leave us.”

Finch said it also could have a little bit to do with the leadership program, too. “Maybe a little bit,” Harlan said.

Council President Jack Wilhite then asked about the deputy treasurer’s salary, acknowledging the clerk-treasurer makes the pay requests for her office’s employees. “Is that in keeping with the 3% across the board that we have been directed to try to maintain?”

Harlan said that position is a little bit over the average of what the other 19 cities are, but he suggested Wilhite ask Clerk-Treasurer Lynne Christiansen why she wanted the deputy treasurer position to be more than 3%. When Wilhite asked Harlan how much, Harlan said 8%.

Wilhite then asked Christiansen why she was proposing a salary increase for someone almost three times the increase proposed for every other city employee; do the wages of the deputy clerk fall below the wages of any other deputy clerks across Indiana in cities the size of Warsaw; and was the city asking the deputy clerk to perform duties that are outside of her job description?

Christiansen said earlier this year she had everyone look at their job descriptions and duties, which hadn’t been done since 2017, and most of her employees had more duties than what they did in 2017. In response, she got some national estimates from Harlan and compared those to her employees’ current salaries and came up with figures for raises for 2024.

She said her employees are working beyond their job descriptions because those descriptions haven’t been updated in five years and her office can’t turn work away.

In a statement Wilhite made, he questioned the amount of the raise and said he’d be OK with a 4% increase and not more. Christiansen responded to his comments, but then was backed up by Councilwomen Diane Quance and Cindy Dobbins who supported the amounts Christiansen proposed. Councilman Jeff Grose agreed with Quance’s comments. Wilhite said considering the increase as a correction didn’t hit him that way, but he would reconsider what was going on with the raise.

The council then unanimously approved the general salary ordinance on first reading, followed by the police, fire and elected officials salary ordinances.

In other business, the council also approved:

• An ordinance vacating a portion of public ways of Beverage and Roosevelt streets, on first reading, as requested by Whimet Properties LLC.

The public ways to be vacated are Beverage Street between lots 3 and 4 and Roosevelt Street between lots 8 and 9 and are on the Whimet campus.

There were no remonstrators to the petition. City Planner Justin Taylor said, “We didn’t see any compelling reason for the city not to relinquish ownership of these roadways to Whimet for their consolidation of their parcel.” Thallemer said properties on either side of the public ways are Whimet’s.

The second reading of the ordinance will take place at the council’s Oct. 16 meeting.

• The 2024 appropriations and tax rates ordinance on second reading. The council had a public hearing and approved the ordinance on first reading at their Sept. 18 meeting.

“We have up until the 1782 Notice is presented, and then we have so many days after that is presented to make further cuts. So, with that, this is pretty much the start of the budgeting process. Nothing can be raised after this, but certainly there can be cuts made and we’ll look at that as we get closer to the calculations of the (Department of Local Government Finance) on our final tax rate,” Thallemer told the council.