By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Nonunion city employees have gone without a pay raise since 2008 and will wait even longer.

City council members said Monday they’re concerned about equity in monetary bonuses for items such as longevity pay, having college degrees and for not using sick time.

With declining tax revenue and city Finance Director David Bozanich saying the city could face significant financial problems in 2016, some council members said this isn’t the ideal time to be handing out pay raises even though most nonunion workers deserve them.

The city’s income-tax and business-profit collections are on pace to be $1.1 million less than budgeted this year, Bozanich said. Just last year, those collections were $2.3 million less than budgeted.

There are other shortfalls that leave this year’s budget with an overall $2.21 million shortfall. But Bozanich said there are ways — an expected $400,000 workers’ compensation refund, postponing $650,000 in expenditures until 2015, a $185,000 health-insurance savings and using $975,000 from the city’s workers’ comp reserve — to balance this year’s budget.

The budget will be “tight” in 2015 and 2016 with layoffs a possibility in the latter year, he said.

At the conclusion of Monday’s finance committee meeting, council members said they want more information before considering the proposed pay increases for nonunion employees.

Council next meets Nov. 12, but Councilwoman Janet Tarpley, D-6th, said voting on pay raises at that meeting isn’t going to happen.

“We want to see more details of contracts for comparison before voting,” she said.

During the meeting, Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th, said, “A more in-depth look is needed. Maybe we should have another meeting to discuss this before a decision.”

Bozanich, Mayor John A. McNally and Deputy Finance Director Kyle Miasek said Monday that the pay raises and increases in other perks put nonunion employees on the same ground as unionized workers in the city.

There are 170 nonunion employees in city government, including 56 in the court system and 11 attorneys in the law department. Most others are management employees in various city departments.

Also among the 170 are the seven city council members, council president, the mayor, law director, finance director, two judges and three Civil Service Commission members. They are not eligible for the pay raises and the bonus pays, except most are given extra money for having college degrees.

The administration’s proposal was to give a 1 percent salary increase to nonunion employees in November or December of this year, and a 1.5 percent increase starting January 2015. That is what’s been offered to unionized city employees.

Some unions have voted in favor of the contracts with those raises while three others — those representing firefighters, ranking police officers and wastewater employees — have rejected deals, but not because of the raises. The unions’ memberships say issues with health insurance are the reasons those contracts have been turned down.

Officials with five of the city’s nine employee unions wrote a letter to council members before the meeting stating they didn’t receive the same across-the-board increases in bonus pay.

“In order to prevent dissension amongst the ranks of the city, to foster further good-faith bargaining in the future, and to illustrate that cost-saving measures are implemented fairly among all city works,” the proposal should be rejected, the officials wrote.

In the letter, they mention nonunion employees receiving 10.5 percent increases in their benefits between 2008 and 2010.

But Bozanich and Miasek said those increases were approved and then quickly rescinded because of the city’s finances.

This proposal puts nonunion employees on equal footing with unionized workers, Miasek said.

The proposal includes increasing longevity pay — based on the number of years a person works for the city after being there for at least three years with a 25-year maximum — from $64 to $65 per year. That would mean someone working for the city for 10 years would go from a $640 annual bonus to $650 a year.

The bonus for a bachelor’s degree would go from $450 a year to $470 a year. There are some unions that don’t have education bonuses. But the proposal for nonunion workers would be in-line with union members who receive that perk, Miasek said.

Also, management employees receive $153.38 per quarter in a bonus if they don’t use sick-leave time in a three-month period. That would increase to $159 a quarter, and be the same amount other unions receive, Miasek said.