Travis County Commissioners Court
September 13, 2005
Item 8
Number 8. 8. Consider and take appropriate action on the following: a. Revision to the Travis County classified pay scale by widening the pay range widths and increasing the overall pay scale by 3 percent to achieve market competitiveness; b. Recommended job titles and pay grades that resulted from the abbreviated job analysis project on selected titles in the equipment road/general maintenance and technical/skilled trades job families; and c. Reassignment of building service manager and building maintenance division manager job classifications to more appropriate job family.
>> good afternoon, alicia perez, executive manager for administrative operations, last week we were before you and you had -- you had, judge, I believe you had several questions that -- that we provided supplemental information on -- on what the proposal was and the first two recommendations, that we gave the court was to increase your current pay scale by 3% from -- from level 1, grades one through 32, to midpoint. And then also to -- to broaden the scale to widen the scale. What we provided to you so it would be clearer, a copy of the current scale, then a copy of the proposed scale. What that provides is a -- a better picture, a better graphic of how the scale is -- is broadened and we really start our pay scale at grade 4, even though we don't use that because our minimum pay is $10 an hour. So if we look at grade 4 all the way through grade 32 the width of the pay ranges will be broadened. And if -- if we just take, for example, pay grade 10, that right now, the width of that is 40%. That will go on the new pay scale to 45%. And you see changes all along. If we look at pay grade 20, that in the current scale -- is 50%. And in the new pay scale, it is 50%. But if you look at pay grade 32, the -- the pay scale is 50% and that means 50% from the beginning, the minimum, to the maximum, that is broadened from the minimum to the maximum by 60%. So there are changes and there are changes all along the pay scale. What this does, by widening the pay scale, it will help eliminate the red line issue, which we hear is a problem faced by many employees. It also by increasing the pay scale by 3% it helps make our pay scale more competitive. More in line with what we're seeing in the market now. It also provides by shifting the scale provides a better foundation by which we can start our new cycle of market salary surveys for next year. If you have any questions, we're here to answer them.
>> did you guys get a chance yet based on the actions that we took last week in markup related to -- to compensation about trying to get some kind of account as to -- how many green circles are still out there, whether we have appropriately reduced the number of red lineners because we -- if this is successful, our lengthening the scale.
>> yes, we do have some preliminary numbers. With the decisions made on last week and after applying 3% cola, there was some 244 red lined employees and after applying the cola that number would be reduced to 27. From 244 to 27, those are red lined employees. The green circled number, the total on that yielded 97, 97 moving from a total of 602 to a total of 97 after the cost of living was applied. That breaks out into 37 of those are the basic what we would call real green circled and the 60 or so are -- positions would really be those deposits have chosen to underfill. They are legitimate reasons, of course, for underfilling.
>> we still have opportunities because there's two percent over that 3% that's certainly in terms of departments individually felt like their green circles was there biggest issue. They could work on strategies to interp neal solve that problem and attach extra dollars to fix the problem if they felt that that was their biggest issue within the departments.
>> let me make sure that I have got these numbers right, linda. On the red line, we went from 244 to 27, to 27.
>> all right. On the green circle. -- from 602 to 97. All right. 602.
>> just to remind the court that these are literally estimates, we have performance based pays and to process as well as other actions for fy '05, but this is the closest that we could get it in terms of your projections.
>> all right.
>> Commissioner Davis, out of the 97, 60 are underfills and 37 are green circle. Sometimes people underfill in terms of training, it's not an opportunity for training position, it's a temporary underfill, so they can -- they can have a -- have a time to provide training or -- or to see if the -- if the person will work out in that particular job. So that they underfill it. Or it's a temporary position for someone while they are waiting for a license or a degree or some other qualification to -- to promote into a higher level position.
>> so they have utility.
>> one minor point. This is Travis County planning and budget office. What I would like to bring up is whenever we included funding for the new positions that were included in this year's budget we based it on the current payroll, not the payroll with the 3%. We did a quick calculation and -- and based on the funding for the new positions at minimum it would cost approximately $80,000 to bring them up to the new pay scale. Given the significant amount of resources that was approved last week and hrmd's recommendation that the departments could either slightly underfill or use performance based pay, we just wanted to bring it to your attention that these positions were based on the current pay scale, not the proposed.
>> remind me of that green circle.
>> it means that someone is below minimum of the particular pay grade.
>> below minimum of the pay grade.
>> yes. So if the pay grade starts at $10 an hour, means that they are at below that at -- at even 9.50 or -- or 9.99. A common way that that happens is -- is underfilling at the time of hire.
>> yes.
>> there's a lot of times that we will see on our personnel amendments that we are bringing certain positions out of green circle because when somebody who is much, much, much more senior, like beyond midpoint or beyond that, when somebody leaves they have money freed up within their departmental budget, they can bring up people out of green circle status, we see that a lot in terms of that's why all of these great things of moving people around from slot number to slot number, so that they can kind of keep track of which is their green circle, which is not.
>> we reported to you number two last week, sort of informally, from the three years worth of work that we have done, that departments have actually eliminated their green circle titles and the numbers that we were showing total, actually for -- for your five declined something like 19 green circles. We still roll over and reflect that in what we have reported to you today.
>> so the number continues to decline. The bottom line is that departments do make every effort to use their allocated funds to eliminate the green circle status.
>> I would like to move approval of 8 a.
>> second.
>> what about b and c.
>> I’m happy with those, two.
>> b and c.
>> anybody else here on this item?
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> thumbs up. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote, Commissioner Gomez temporarily away from the dais.
>> good job.
>> we have the next recommendation -- all of them, okay, great. Thank you. [laughter]
>> a, b, c.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, September 14, 2005 9:23 AM