Minutes December 5, 2005
CITY OF DENTON CITY COUNCIL MINUTES
December 5, 2005
After determining that a quorum was present, the City Council convened in a Special Called
Meeting on Monday, December 5, 2005 at 11:30 a.m. in the Council Work Session Room.
PRESENT: Mayor Brock; Mayor Pro Tem McNeill; Council Members Heggins, Mulroy, and
Thomson.
ABSENT: Council Members Montgomery and Kamp.
1. The Council received a report, held a discussion, and gave staff direction on
compensation.
Mike Conduff, City Manager, stated that during the budget process, it was recommended that
Council authorize a compensation study, which would be funded over two fiscal years. During
the October 11, 2005 meeting, Council requested that staff bring back a work session item to
provide an overview of compensation. Rollie Waters with the Waters Consulting Group was
present to conduct the training.
Mr. Waters began with the description of a project overview. The project overview started with
job analysis, finding out what people did. Job evaluation involved job ranking of positions.
Salary survey, salary structures, performance appraisals, and administrative policy were other
key elements of the project overview.
Waters continued with major concepts in compensation administration. Components of those
major concepts included internal equity; relationships between and among jobs in the
organization; individual equity; relationships between and among individuals in the organization
and external equity on comparing to other cities. Objectives of these three equity issues were
maintaining cost control, motivating competent staff and attracting and retaining competent staff.
Job Evaluation and Internal Equity contained two aspects. One was non-quantitative which
included ranking, classification and slotting. The other was quantitative which included point
factor and factor comparison. Point factor evaluation included knowledge, organizational
control, working conditions, freedom to exercise authority, experience, human relations skills,
complexity and budget responsibility. Point factors and grading of jobs were included in the job
evaluation.
A market survey involved key factors in the identification of benchmark organizations including
commonality of positions, competition for jobs, location/proximity, services provided, and
comparable in size. Jobs benchmarked for salary surveys were widespread jobs, precisely
defined, performed similarly and qualified in class series. The number of pay structures
determined from the market survey might include diversity of jobs in the organization, diversity
in grading procedures, balancing internal equity versus external equity competitiveness and
culture of the organization.
Policy issues included salary administration with a lead policy, a lag policy, or a lead/lag policy.
Other issues associated with salary administration included pay range overlap, single rate,
automatic step rate, variable step, a combination of step rate and merit, and merit based only on
performance. New system strategies included goals of bringing all employees to the midpoint
range that were below, provide the employees that were in the lowest quadrants with a larger
increase, or implement no salary increases that would put salaries above the maximum of their
City of Denton City Council Minutes
December 5, 2005
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salary range. Merit increase guidelines could be based on performance only, based on
performance and position in range, based on performance and position in range using variable
timing, or base the increase as a percentage of the midpoint.
Waters reviewed several samples of public safety plans. He stated that a new trend was skill-
based pay. A skill based pay system was person-based. It focused on an individual?s ability to
contribute to the organization and emphasized learning by promoting the acquisition of new
skills. Traditional pay systems were job-based with the nature of the work performed and the
value of that work drove compensation. With a skill based pay results model the focus was on
enhancing an individual?s ability to contribute to the overall good of the organization. Skill-
based pay policy issues included organizational objectives, critical behaviors, and reward
systems. It also dealt with employee involvement, skill certification, placement of current
employees, training availability, performance assessment, movement through skill zones and
placement of new employees.
Salary and benefits trending including statistics in the TML average salary percent increase,
executive management positions, non-exempt salary increase percentage, fire and police
department positions, human resource positions, administrative positions, and cost of living
percentages. Benefits to consider when detailing salary included vacation, sick leave, holidays,
group insurance, medical coverage, education, retirement, uniforms, and pay plans. Health plan
cost trends was also a factor to consider. Effective performance management included issues
such a competency-based pay and results-based measures.
Council discussed the information presented by Mr. Waters. Discussion included the fact that to
hire positions there was a need to pay more than anyone else was paying which could be handled
with some qualifiers; training should be from within in order to allow for advancement from
within; a grid of personnel positions with tenure in the job and whether there was a chronic
inability to fill that position would be helpful; and there would be moral problems if there wasn?t
a good compensation program.
2. The Council held a discussion and gave staff direction regarding the calendar for the
Council Office.
City Manager Conduff indicated that now that the Council office was back on-line, staff needed
to know how to appropriately schedule the office and who had priority.
Consensus of Council was to have someone maintain a scheduling calendar similar to the method
of the conference rooms. The schedule could be added to the end of the weekly memo. At this
point, Linda Holley would be the best person to take care of the scheduling.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 1:30 p.m.
___________________________ _________________________________
EULINE BROCK JENNIFER WALTERS
MAYOR CITY SECRETARY
CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS CITY OF DENTON, TEXAS