SANGER — When City Manager Mike Brice was a firefighter in the small Oklahoma town of Nichols Hills, employees of the police and fire departments went for four years without raises in the mid-1980s.

Mike Brice

The union had negotiated merit pay raises in steps, but after the oil bust, the city couldn’t afford to pay them.

“It was a knuckle-wrenching time,” Brice said, adding that if the city and union had found some common ground another way, public safety employees might have received raises as soon as that second year.

To keep that from happening in Sanger, Brice proposed the City Council adopt an uncommon tool for the public sector, but often used in the private sector — benchmarks.

With a benchmark system, a city employee’s merit raise is based primarily on the individual annual evaluation. But funding all the raises remains with the City Council.

“That way, you control it,” Brice told the council in Monday night’s workshop session. “It could be 4 percent one year … or zero the next, if you found you couldn’t afford it.”

For example, Brice said if the council adopts a 4 percent benchmark for the coming year, any employee who scores exceptionally high on the annual evaluation could receive 1.5 times the benchmark, or a 6 percent raise. Employees who do very well, but score lower, would receive the benchmark rate of 4 percent. Employees who are dependable, but not exceptional, could still score high enough to receive 50 percent of the benchmark, or a 2 percent raise. 

Brice also proposed that the city adopt pay grades, so that the city would be assured that positions in different departments were treated equitably. Many of the pay grades would be tied to specific criteria, such as licensing and certification, before an employee could move up in pay. Others would require not only the additional expertise, but also a vacancy in the upper slot.

In addition, pay grades also would make it clear to employees how they could build a career ladder with the city, if they wanted, Brice said.

Council member Andy Garza worried that wouldn’t be enough to retain employees.

“Sometimes we are losing people to Denton and Dallas and other local towns,” Garza said.

Brice cautioned the council that Sanger could never afford to pay as much as larger cities in the area, and to remember other things Sanger has to offer its employees.

“They will stay with us for other reasons — maybe they grew up here, or they live here and don’t want to drive to work,” Brice said.

He presented the council with a study comparing salaries with comparable cities. City staff used a Texas Municipal League database to see whether Sanger employees fell in the same range. About 11 of the city’s 60 employees would require some adjustments in the coming budget, from a low of $60 more for one employee to a high of $3,000 for another.

After making sure the analysis didn’t use cherry-picked numbers, council member Thomas Muir said he was surprised it would take a total of only $7,000 to make the market and pay grade adjustments.

“I’m pleased that it came out with most people in the pay range,” Muir said. 

While many Sanger employees will likely see some kind of pay raise, based on the benchmarks the city is poised to adopt, Brice found himself again waiting to see whether he would get a pay raise. The council discussed his city manager contract in executive session, but delayed any action until the next meeting, Aug. 4.

PEGGY HEINKEL-WOLFE can be reached at 940-566-6881. Her e-mail address is pheinkel-wolfe@dentonrc.com .