Thousand Oaks Council Raises Pay Scales for Managers Up to 10.7%

Arguing that bigger paychecks will help the city retain top-notch employees, a majority of Thousand Oaks council members voted Tuesday to boost salary brackets for key employees by as much as 10.7%.

The move will increase the potential earnings of a variety of top managers by several thousand dollars a year. The maximum possible salary for the directors of the finance, planning and public works departments, for example, would jump from $103,452 to $111,888 a year.

But although the salary brackets will shift upward, individual managers are not guaranteed pay increases.

Any impact would be delayed until next summer, after performance evaluations scheduled for July. And, as in previous years, all pay hikes will be based on merit--although the higher salary brackets could add a percentage point or two to the average wage increase.

In addition to the top employees, scores of lower-level workers from meter readers to engineering technicians will see their salary brackets adjusted, in most cases upward. Many of the city’s 398 employees will also get revised job descriptions that better reflect the work they perform.

All told, the revised job and compensation classifications should cost the city about $300,000 a year, according to human resources manager Greg Eckman.

“These cost increases are not for the management and professional staff by and large, but mostly for the blue-collar workers,” City Manager Grant Brimhall said in an interview. Brimhall’s potential earnings will nudge upward less than 1%.

Brimhall pointed out that many lower-level staffers have been working feverishly to keep up with work demands since the city laid off employees and imposed a hiring freeze three years ago. The City Hall work force has shrunk by nearly 18% in the past few years, with a net loss of about 85 employees.

Yet such arguments did not win over Councilwomen Elois Zeanah and Jaime Zukowski, who said they were uncomfortable with inflating potential earnings for top managers already earning close to six-digit salaries.

“Pay scales need to be adjusted from time to time, but I cannot support a 10% raise for anybody,” Zeanah said.

In particular, Zeanah singled out the wage bracket for the director of library services. The compensation adjustment will boost his potential learnings by 10.7%, with the maximum salary jumping to $104,112 a year.

“We had to cut the library staff, close our libraries on Friday and borrow $100,000 (from an internal city fund) to pay debt service on the Newbury Park Library, so what in the world are we doing trying to adjust brackets?” Zeanah asked.

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In response, Brimhall and other officials said the higher brackets would help the city recruit and retain five-star employees.

To come up with the revised salary rages, consultants from a San Diego firm, Reward Strategy Group, compared Thousand Oaks municipal wages with the paychecks doled out in other cities.

“I think it’s a fair report,” Public Works Director Donald Nelson said.

For less-skilled positions, including clerical and secretarial staff, the consultants checked Thousand Oaks salaries against the local market in Ventura County. For more advanced jobs, like department heads and engineers, Thousand Oaks was compared with cities such as Irvine, Torrance and Pasadena.

“We can beat our chest til the cows come home, but if we don’t have competitive wages, we can’t provide the services we want to provide because we can’t retain the people we need,” Brimhall said.

Thousand Oaks has had little problem with turnover in the upper echelons of city government--in fact, several top administrators have served for more than a decade. But Brimhall said the salary brackets could be vital in recruiting qualified new employees when veterans retire.

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No city workers commented publicly on the issue during Tuesday’s meeting.

Burned out after an 18-month contract negotiation with the city, mid-level managers figured they would accept whatever salary hikes they could get and keep quiet about perceived inequities, said Jeff Knowles, president of a labor union representing 85 mid-level managers.

“The general attitude is . . . this isn’t the time to challenge things,” Knowles said. “There have to be changes at the senior level before things can be made right. We’re just waiting until the next election to see what will change around here.”