Consultant presents pay-study findings and urges clearer job evaluation

City Manager staff and a consultant told the Fort Myers City Council workshop on Aug. 25 that the city’s classification and total-compensation study is not complete but that the existing design and retirement benefits are competitive.

Marvoline Scott, director of human resources and risk management, introduced Dan Rippberger, president of Bolton, who said the study combined job-evaluation work with market benchmarking and a review of job descriptions. Rippberger said the study found the city’s compensation program "in fairly decent shape" while calling out areas for improved transparency in job grading and title use. "We did a fairly significant market benchmarking," he said, adding the firm matched more than 23,800 incumbent records to peer jobs to construct percentiles.

Rippberger recommended the council set a market-target percentile to guide implementation. He offered the 50th percentile (median) as the baseline and proposed structure adjustments — for example, a 5% revision to the exempt pay structure and a 3.4% revision to the nonexempt structure to align to the median as of Oct. 1, 2025. He cautioned that actual pay movement would be phased and that communication about grading and job evaluation needs work to avoid perceived unfairness.

Council members asked for an implementation plan tied to a chosen percentile, and staff said they would return with numbers for options including 50th and higher percentiles and an amended peer group if councilors preferred to remove larger East-Coast peers. The council did not take formal action in the workshop; staff said no documents would be released publicly until the final report to avoid confusion during ongoing union negotiations.