City salaries to face review

Las Vegas is moving forward with a review of salaries and benefits for city employees, something that hasn't been done since the mid-1990s.

"Close to 75 percent of our costs are personnel-related," Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell said. "We haven't done one in 14 years, and probably best management practices would say that you have at least one of these done per decade."

A $360,000 contract with The Segal Co. is on next week's Las Vegas City Council agenda. The contract calls for the company, which bills itself as a human resources and benefits consulting firm, to review the classification, compensation and benefits of city employees.

The analysis is part of a broader review of city operations called for by the City Council in May after a bleak assessment of the city's financial outlook for the next few years.

"We were pretty much directed at the budget hearing ... to really look at this issue of compensation," Fretwell said. "It's really important for us to have a solid understanding of how our entire payment scheme for employees compares to other organizations that are similar."

The information will be used in contract negotiations with employee unions. The firefighters' contract is up in 2009, and the Las Vegas City Employees Association contract will be looked at in 2011.

Those talks could have a different tone this time around.

City leaders have been told that existing pay and benefit packages might not be sustainable because Las Vegas can't expect the high levels of growth, and growth in revenue, that have fueled the city for years.

Benefits include fully paid health insurance premiums for employees as well as 100 percent of the contribution to the Public Employees Retirement System.

Union contracts also call for annual pay raises that include a "step" raise of 4 percent or 5 percent and a cost-of-living adjustment of 3 percent or 4 percent.

Las Vegas had to trim $20 million from its annual budget this year to make up a shortfall caused by declining revenue from the consolidated sales tax, which provides the majority of the city's general fund revenue. Shortfalls of $40 million have been predicted annually through 2010.

While double-digit growth is gone, at least for now, city revenues are expected to grow at about 5 percent a year through 2013. Expenses probably will eat that up, however, with the largest one being the cost of labor. It's projected to rise by an average of 6.7 percent a year over the same period for an overall increase of more than $90 million.

The city's salary structure hasn't been looked at comprehensively for a while, but a few individual positions have been examined.

Compared to other public entities in Clark County as well as similar cities, such as Phoenix, Denver and Salt Lake City, some of the salaries were in line with average pay in other places.

Several jobs, though, paid 10 percent to 20 percent more in Las Vegas than the average salary for the same job elsewhere.

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.