City Council Gets Pay Recommendations For City Employees

It would cost the city pf Cheyenne roughly $653, 000 to bring city employees up to the pay levels recommended by a consultant hired to study employee pay and other issues.

That's according to information presented to council members at a work session on Wednesday by Phillip Robertson, a Senior Vice President with the North Carolina- based Mercer Group. Robertson's Draft Final Report on Compensation and Classification of city employees assigned every city employee into one of 21 pay grades. Each pay grade in turn was assigned a minimum, a mid point and a maximum pay level. The report recommended employee pay ranging from, $24, 519.40 per year as the minimum for the lowest pay grad up to $127, 825.28 per year as the maximum for the highest pay grade.

A seperate section dealt with pay levels at the Cheyenne Police Department. That report assigned members of the Police Department to one of four pay grades, ranging from $47, 917.44 on the low end to $101, 287.23 on the  high end of the highest pay grade.The Compensation and Classification study is the first part of an overall Employee Investment Study, which is to also include a study of staffing and other organizational issues.

Mayor Rick Kaysen says the report will go before the city council at it's August 26 meeting. At Wednesday's work session, councilwoman Georgia Broyles commented she thought the $653,000 figure for improving city employee pay is ''doable". Several council members during the course of the presentation questioned some of the methodology and other aspects of the report, however.