Beginning in July, several city employees will notice a change in their paychecks following action by Emporia City Commissioners Wednesday.
During their regular action meeting, commissioners approved the 2023 compensation plan wage scales. The scales will bring all employees who were previously below the regional minimum base pay up to that level.
The increase follows a recent salary study conducted by the Arnold Group which was presented to the commission two weeks ago. As part of that presentation, commissioners discussed how to handle an issue of “wage compression” – the difference in pay based on years of employment.
The main concern related to new employees making the same as longtime employees thus eliminating what City Manager Trey Cocking called a “wage journey.”
As part of their discussions Wednesday, commissioners chose to move forward with budgeting for the 2024 fiscal year with zero wage compression. Cocking tells KVOE News this will help to preserve the “wage journey” for all employees and will mean pay will be based largely on years of employment with annual merit increases.
While this is a win for the city, Cocking says the major focus will be paying for the new scales.
The new wage scales will take effect Jul. 9.
In other business, commissioners gave approval for city staff to enter into negotiations with Arch Images, an architecture firm based in Lenexa, for a three-phased improvement project for the Emporia Fire Department. The phases will include the construction of a new fire station one, updates to fire station two and the repurposing of the current fire station one space.
Emporia Fire Chief Brandon Beck tells KVOE News, “This has been a vision and a dream for the department for quite some time and as time goes on the need increases.”
The new fire station will be located east of the current station in the 500 Block of Market Street on city-owned property, however, an exact address has not been nailed down. The project has a budget of $10 million according to Beck and a project timeline is currently pending.
Additionally Wednesday commissioners:
*Approved an application to the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation for an emergency solutions grant.
*Approved an MOU with Healthier Lyon County
*Appointed members to the golf advisory board and Emporia Metropolitan Area Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals.
The Emporia City Commission will next convene on Wednesday, May 24th at 11 am inside of the Municipal Courtroom at White Auditorium.
