HANCEVILLE, Ala. – Beginning Oct. 1, 2019, City of Hanceville employees will see a little more money in their paychecks. The Hanceville City Council Thursday night approved a new structured pay scale with yearly evaluations to determine future increases.
Hanceville Mayor Kenneth Nail said, “This is a pay scale that we came up where each increment comes to an 2.5% pay increase per year. This will allow new employees to bring up to five years of service with them, Also, it will give them credit for an associate degree, which will be 5%, or two steps. A bachelor’s degree will be 10%, or four steps. Everybody in here will get at least a 2.5% increase, and some will be a tad bit over 4%.”
Each year employees will be evaluated by their department head and department heads evaluated by the mayor. A positive evaluation will result in a one-step increase. Other determining factors include tenure, skills and certifications.
Hanceville City Clerk Tania Wilcox explained, “We will have to go back and look at their experience and see what kind of degrees or certifications they may have. That’s why it’s going to be individual.”
Councilwoman Kim Brown asked how the increase would impact the FY2020 budget, to which Wilcox replied, “Police officers’ base rate will be going up quite a bit, so for his (Chief Bob Long) department, he averaged it out and said that his department will go up 7% overall. Not all departments will be like that. It should be no more than about a 5% increase than you might normally have.”
As Hanceville shifts to the structured pay scale, Wilcox acknowledged there could be some difficulties.
She said, “This first year is just going to be really tough as far as fitting everybody in. It’s got to be fair across the board. It’s got to be equitable. It’s got to be in comparison, because the ideal of doing this pay scale was to try to get everybody on a normal schedule and try to be up with other places around to try to keep retaining our employees.”
Department heads will meet with each employee to explain where he or she falls on the pay scale.
Nail emphasized, “Everyone will at least get 2.5%. You strictly can’t go by year because if you did, it would probably bankrupt the City. We want to be good to our employees, but we also need to have money to pay the bills.”
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