Council suspends raises for 2 workers

Hubbard council
members say they did not give permission for the raises to be granted.

By JOHN W. GOODWIN JR.

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

HUBBARD — City council has stopped pay raises ordered by the mayor for two city employees.

Council members, at a regular meeting Monday, introduced legislation to suspend a 3.5 percent 2008 pay raise for the mayor’s secretary and superintendent of streets. Second and third reading on the ordinance were suspended and the measure passed unanimously.

The mayor’s secretary and the superintendent of streets both received 3.5 percent raises in January 2007. The mayor had asked for an additional 3.5 percent pay increase for the employees in 2008, but that increase had been held up until council could act on last year’s raises.

Council members have said they did not learn of the raises granted in 2007 until early this year and did not give permission for them to be granted.

Mayor Arthur U. Magee said his decision to issue the increases in pay was made only after a large group of union employees received identical increases. He said it had been customary to issue salaried employees identical pay increases to union employees.

Magee said the move was simply in the interest of fairness.

Council members said the street department superintendent was given a raise, with the approval of council, in 2005. Several members said the 2005 pay raise shows the mayor knows the proper procedure for granting pay raises to salaried employees.

Councilman William Williams said he has two problems with accepting that the move was done to be fair to all employers. The first issue Williams said he had with the pay raises is that there were “done in secret.” Williams also said other salaried employees, such as the police chief, were not given pay raises.

Magee said he simply overlooked the police chief.

Williams also took issue with granting the raises based on raises given to union employees. He said pay increases for the salaried positions are merit based, and he will need to see justification before upholding any raises for the employees.

“There was a mistake here, and the mistake needs to be rectified. If raises are to be considered for these two employees it needs to be done properly,” he said.

Council also discussed about $8,000 in compensatory time pay issued to the superintendent of streets. Magee said such comp time pay has been common practice in the past.

jgoodwin@vindy.com