Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Employment And Pay topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Consultant: Milford pay plan remains competitive but select job grades should be adjusted to market
Summary
Evergreen Solutions presented a draft compensation and classification study that found Milford’s pay structure generally above market average but identified specific job families behind market; consultants recommended regrading those positions and using a comp‑ratio method to preserve incumbents’ progress.
A consultant from Evergreen Solutions summarized a compensation and classification study for City of Milford employees and recommended targeted grade adjustments for positions that lag the external market.
Michael Mazrai of Evergreen Solutions reviewed the study’s goals, methodology and findings and said the project aimed to assess the city’s internal classification structure, compare pay to a market of peer jurisdictions and recommend remedies for gaps. He told council the study combines internal job analyses, employee outreach and an external market survey of roughly 25 peer organizations and an average of 9.5 matches per benchmark position.
Mazrai said the city’s pay structure compares favorably to peers overall — in the aggregate the structure was ahead of the market average by roughly 7–14% when not adjusting for cost of living and about 10–17% after regional cost adjustments — but he cautioned that not every title is at or above market. He said most of the workforce is clustered logically in pay ranges, that broad compression was not found, but that a subset of roughly 77 incumbents (positions) were identified for recommended adjustment and the average individual adjustment would be about $2,000 under the proposed method.
The consultant’s recommendation for positions materially behind market was to reassign those titles to higher grades so their ranges align with market averages. For affected incumbents Evergreen proposed preserving each employee’s relationship to the midpoint of their range — a “comp‑ratio” placement that transfers an employee’s earned progression into the new range rather than resetting pay to the new minimum. Mazrai said that approach minimizes disruption and avoids creating compression or pay‑hierarchy reversals.
Mazrai said the final report provided full job‑by‑job comparisons, the peer matches and cost‑of‑living adjustments; he said the report is still in draft form and that the consultant will incorporate final council or committee guidance before publishing the final report to HR and to the public. City staff and some council members asked for the full job‑by‑job appendices and the detailed cost and implementation tables, and Mazrai said that material is included in the draft final and will be published with the final report.
Council members expressed interest and some surprise that roughly 77 employees were flagged for market adjustments; Evergreen explained that particular job families move at different market speeds (for example, IT or building inspectors can show faster market movement) and that periodic studies are intended to catch such divergence. The police chief asked for additional consideration of public safety pay grades; Mazrai said Evergreen would meet with the chief and include any market evidence in the final draft for council consideration.
No formal action was taken; council asked staff to circulate the draft final report appendices and to coordinate follow‑up meetings between the consultant and departmental leads before the final report is finalized.
