Several Town of Normal employees will get their semiannual cost of living raises, but Council Member Stan Nord says it’s a bad look for the town in the current economic climate.
During Monday’s Town Council meeting, Nord cast the lone vote against approving the 0.3% adjustment set to take effect at the start of April. He said many residents who don’t work for the town are facing financial uncertainty amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“We’re going to have people struggling out there and I don’t think it’s going to be taken well right at the same time when our businesses and other taxpayers are facing a huge financial struggle and uncertainty as for how long this is going to go on,” Nord said.
The salary schedule increase applies to the town’s 245 non-union employees. City Manager Pam Reece said the cost of living adjustments allow the town to remain competitive in recruiting and retaining employees.
Council member Chemberly Cummings said the town has a hard enough time attracting candidates with its current salary structure.
“I know there are some openings in our innovations and technology area and somebody basically told me, ‘There’s no way I would work for the town because you can’t pay me what I make doing the same exact job,’” Cummings said. “We do ourselves a further disservice to not at least try to at least meet somewhere to be competitive.”
Nord cited a WGLT report from last week indicating wages in McLean County are flat and have lagged behind the rest of the U.S. economy.
“Outside of the government sector, salaries are not going up. They are going down,” he said. “We’re in the middle of this crisis and we’ve got people that are not in government jobs that are losing their jobs, or they’re not going to be paid for a while and may have to go on unemployment.”
However, Kevin McCarthy noted a difference between salaries and total compensation when making comparisons regarding the McLean County wage report, saying compensation figures include total benefit packages that can range between $12,000-20,000.
Nord said citizens will view the raises as a tax increase, but Cummings, McCarthy and Kathleen Lorenz all stressed the increase is not a tax hike.
“Let’s be clear on that, because we’ve already budgeted and accounted for this type of thing,” Cummings said.
Later in the meeting Nord suggested the town should consider pushing some projects into the future to reduce expenses in light of the pandemic.
“Anything we can do to save some money, I think we should do and kind of triage spending,” he said. “If it's something we don't have to spend money on now, save it because we've got a lot of unknowns coming up quickly.”
Other action
Among other business, the Council:
- passed a revised resolution to use $1.55 million in Motor Fuel Tax funds for street resurfacing projects
- authorized a $154,000 contract with Curly Contracting on a rehabilitation project for the Uptown Normal cistern;
- approved a contract extension with Cardinal Infrastructure for lobbying services related to federal funding; Nord voted no;
- entered a joint agreement with Bloomington and the Ecology Action Center on an energy efficiency program; Nord voted no.
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