Council regrades city clerk, downgrades assistant city manager and approves finance manager job

The Minot City Council on Tuesday approved several changes to city job classifications that officials described as technical but important for salary equity and recruitment.

Council members voted to adopt the Civil Service Commission’s recommendation and set the city clerk position at grade 69 after a contested debate about whether the staff rubric (which had scored the position at 68) or the civil-service recommendation should control. “We have to trust the process the HR director and team went through,” Alderman Bless said as he supported following the HR rubric; others argued the civil‑service commission’s findings justified a higher grade. The vote to set the clerk at grade 69 passed 6–1.

Separately the council approved downgrading the assistant city manager classification from grade 94 to 91, reflecting a shift of direct public-works supervisory duties out of that role and a re-definition that emphasizes strategic planning and process-improvement duties. Council approved holding that vacant position open through the budget process and implementing the reclassification after July 1.

The council also approved a new finance manager job description and authorized staff to move forward filling two positions: upgrading one internal accountant into a finance-manager role and downgrading a vacant financial‑specialist job to a financial‑clerk classification to maintain budget neutrality. Finance Director David Lakefield told council he expects the change to be slightly salary‑saving overall. The motion to approve the job description and related staffing changes passed unanimously.

Throughout the debate, council members pressed HR and the city attorney on the limits of council authority when deviating from rubric-driven grades, legal risk from inconsistent treatment, and the need for objective, defensible job descriptions. “If you’re not treating people the same, it can lead to lawsuits,” the city attorney warned, urging the council to document any mitigating circumstances when changing grades.

What it means: The changes adjust pay-grade designations tied to job descriptions rather than to individual employees and are intended to reflect workloads after restructuring of duties (notably the elimination of an executive‑secretary role and the reassignment of some responsibilities to the clerk). City staff will implement the classifications consistent with civil-service and budget rules.

Next steps: Staff will post the assistant-city-manager job after council direction in hiring windows set by the budget process; HR will provide the council with the financial calculations and certification of available budget-to-pay increases per municipal ordinance before any reclassification becomes effective.