The Mayor likes to brag about how he runs Sioux Falls like a business. Looking at the salary packages of city employees since 2010 and you will certainly see that he is either running a corporate business model when rewarding ‘certain’ employees for what seems like loyalty or he is using public treasure to be in good graces with these employees.
The below graphic is just a sliver of the data processed. We found that many of the lower end city employees did not receive any or only COLA increases from 2010-2013 (coming out of a recession) while management and promoted workers received enormous increases. Yearly increases for some of the management/supervisor employees was between 12-15%. Remember, this is when tax revenue was down, and we were coming out of an economic downturn.
This graphic only shows the TOP 44 employess who received the largest increases over a 5 year period of time. While some of the department managers did not receive as high as increases, their wage increases were enormous when compared to the private sector (more on that later).
I left the names of the employees off of the chart, because I concluded though this is public record, it really isn’t about WHO was getting these increases it was about how they are conducted. The layman looking at this would seem to be confused at the rhyme or reason as to how these increases occurred (more on that later). I have often felt public salary increases should be based on three things;
1) COLA
2) Tax revenue increase percentage
3) Performance and Promotion (did the employee reach the objectives given to them by management?
4) Efficiency and Accuracy while maintaining a high level of customer service
It is also important to remember, that some of the larger increases below were due to employees moving from a temp or part-time employee to a full-time employee, but where the shocker comes in is after a small promotion the big leap in salary.
