City consultant says many jobs fall behind market; council to weigh $4–5M aggregate cost scenarios

Veronica, the city’s HR director, introduced the classification and compensation (class‑and‑comp) study and the consultant Sam Hines (Public Sector Personnel Consultants) walked council through the methodology and preliminary results.

Hines said the study identified roughly 328 distinct position classifications, with 230 benchmark roles used for the market comparison. He reported about 39% of benchmarks are behind the market midpoint, 44% competitive, and 17% ahead. For general service employees, two implementation models were modeled: (1) bring employees below a new range minimum up to that minimum (an entry‑level option) and (2) maintain employees’ current comp‑ratio (range penetration) when mapping to new ranges. Without a separate cost‑of‑living adjustment (COLA), option (1) was estimated at about $1.5M (4.75% of payroll) while option (2) ran higher at roughly $2.1M (6.8% of payroll). Hines also modeled public‑safety ranks with full market benchmarks and with Dallas‑Fort‑Worth outliers removed; aligning police entry rates to the full market was estimated at roughly $2.2M (15% of current payroll) and fire at about $1.7M (12.6%).

City staff and council members discussed sequencing options (COLA first vs. market adjustment first), whether to fold certification or additional pays into base salary for cost savings, and whether to exclude DFW comparators because they act as high outliers. Several council members asked for before‑and‑after analyses of last year’s 5% raise and a breakdown of how many employees earn over $100,000 to understand distributional effects. The consultant offered to return with refined cost estimates, alternative phasing options and recommended implementation steps.

Council did not take formal action; staff will return with scenario pricing and clarifying data at the next workshop.