North Las Vegas ordinances aimed at extending hold on administrative raises

If you’re not carrying a badge or a fire hose, you’re probably not getting a raise next year.

That was the message delivered at North Las Vegas City Hall on Wednesday, where City Council members unanimously OK’d a pair of ordinances aimed at extending a two-year moratorium on cost-of-living and merit raises for the city’s top administrators.

More than 60 non-union department managers and city leaders will hand back $934,000 under the move, adding to an eight-digit tally of union employee concessions used to help balance the city’s books through next June.

Only city firefighters and police supervisors — whose collective bargaining agreements don’t expire until July 2015 — look set to take a pay raise before next summer.

Elected leaders had been due for a 1.5 percent cost-of-living increase come July 1. City appointees were in for a 6.8 percent salary bump.

Cash-strapped officials thought better of taking those pay boosts after months spent hammering out a $7.7 million legal settlement with nearly 1,000 police, firefighters and non-public safety Teamsters employees — a move that could have dampened the “esprit de corps” City Manager Jeff Buchanan credited with helping the two sides reach an agreement in the first place.

“There was just a tremendous amount of teamwork that went into this,” Buchanan said. “I think it’s important everyone know that.”

Wednesday’s concessions come against a backdrop of criticism surrounding $43,950 in “professional allowances” recently awarded to 66 top administrators in Henderson.

North Las Vegas hands out a similar stipend to some of its elected officials.

The city ponied up around $43,200 in allowances last fiscal year, including $500 a month for City Council members and $600 a month for Mayor John Lee.

The city also doled out a pair of $6,000 car allowances to Municipal Court judges in 2013.

Officials have no immediate plans to forego the allowances.

“It’s practically and fiscally responsible,” Mayor’s Office Chief of Staff Ryann Juden said of the practice. “(Elected officials) are on regional boards and travel all over the valley for official duties.”

Police Supervisors Association President Leonard Cardinale — one of the few who will get a raise this fiscal year — applauded council members late Wednesday for approval of a long-awaited legal settlement to enable cost-of-living increases for his 40-member bargaining group.

But the settlement, according to Cardinale, could still use a little clarity.

“We’re still talking about jail staffing language,” he said moments before city leaders voted on the deal. “The hold up is a procedural matter on our part.

“I expect we’ll be able to make our revisions in a (memorandum of understanding), but we’ll still have to bring that back so the members can vote on it again.”

Suggested tweaks to the deal’s language sparked a flurry of tense, off-microphone exchanges between Cardinale and staff.

City Council members didn’t volunteer an opinion on potential changes to the deal before unanimously approving it as written.

Officials pointed out that police supervisors overwhelmingly approved that same agreement one week earlier and promised the city “won’t be adding to it.”

Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.