Raises for Worcester department heads: Some city councilors question fairness of proposals

WORCESTER — The City of Worcester's administration has said the salaries of department heads should be raised to make them competitive with other cities and address inequities of pay between positions, but some city councilors Tuesday said they were worried about whether those raises were appropriate compared to rank-and-file employees.

Other councilors defended City Manager Eric D. Batista's judgment and said the City Council had a role in setting a precedent for pay scale this year.

More: Worcester wages: 69 city employees topped $200K in 2023. A look at the payroll

Councilors brought up the department-level positions during Tuesday's Standing Committee on Finance hearing for the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget. All members of the City Council also serve on the committee.

Department-level salaries had been a recurring topic brought up by councilors throughout budget hearings and councilors used the hearing on the city manager's office budget to discuss a memo Batista sent them about the salaries.

"The success of a municipality depends on the experience, skills, and hard work of its employees. That means it’s imperative for a municipality to do everything it can to attract the best candidates for its positions, and in terms of compensation, the City of Worcester has been falling short," Batista wrote in the memo. "As a result, we have lost several talented candidates, as well as existing staff to the private sector and municipalities offering more competitive salaries."

The memo compared the salaries to cabinet positions in Boston and Cambridge, which have higher pay grades than the City of Worcester, and how those executive salaries compared to the salaries of city leadership in terms of percentages. Cambridge has a city manager form of government and Boston has a strong mayor.

Batista said Tuesday that Cambridge and Boston were the two cities most comparable to Worcester in terms of size and unique positions.

The salary raises are part of the administration's pay equity efforts, a goal of compensating employees with similar job functions with comparable pay, regardless of their gender, race and ethnicity.

The city found that there were some key positions to the structure of a municipality that have been historically underfunded. According to Batista's memo, the compensation for those positions was very low for their level of responsibility and compared to what people with similar responsibilities were earning in other municipalities.

The director of human resources, chief financial officer, assistant city manager, inspectional services commissioner and commissioner of transportation – as well as the still vacant chief equity officer position – are among the positions set to receive double-digit percentage increases.

Batista's proposed salary is $283,254, as governed by his two-year contract with the city starting in December 2022. The initial salary for his position was $275,000 and is subject to a 3% cost-of-living increase, or a lesser percentage reflective of the highest percentage increase awarded to any city bargaining unit, after his first year as city manager.

The proposed funding for the assistant city manager position, which is held by Hung Nguyen, is $190,000. In the current fiscal year, the position was approved for $153,911. He would receive a 23% increase and about 67% of Batista's proposed salary.

The proposed funding for the director of human resource position, which is held by William Bagley Jr., is $185,000. In the current fiscal year, the position was approved for $139,321. He would receive a 32.3% increase and about 65.3% of Batista's proposed salary.

The proposed funding for the chief financial officer position, which is held by Timothy J. McGourthy, is $187,000. In the current fiscal year, the position was approved for $166,851. He would receive an 11.6% increase and about 66% of Batista's proposed salary.

The proposed funding for the vacant chief equity officer position is $145,000. In the current fiscal year, the position was approved for $118,449. The position would receive a 22.4% increase and 51.2% of Batista's proposed salary.

The proposed funding for inspectional services commissioner, which is held by Christopher P. Spencer, is $156,000. In the current fiscal year, the position was approved for $138,122. He would receive a 12.9% increase and about 55.1% of Batista's proposed salary.

The proposed funding for the commissioner of transportation, which is held by Stephen S. Rolle, is $156,000. In the current fiscal year, the position was approved for $133,905. He would receive a 16.5% increase and about 55.1% of Batista's proposed salary.

In addition to the executive salaries, the proposed budget calls for a 1.5% market-rate adjustment for all nonunion employees to make up for payment disparities that have built up between union and nonunion employees over the years.

District 3 City Councilor George Russell kicked off the discussion of salaries Tuesday and brought up that Cambridge and Boston have much higher costs of living than Worcester. Russell said looking into other cities like Providence and Hartford found widely divergent results that were hard to compare to Worcester.

Russell also took issue with the city manager's office's use of videos and a Substack blog to discuss city policies that would be going to the City Council, saying it could be seen as an attempt to influence the public and the votes of councilors.

Batista said the centralization of the city's media team is to prevent challenges or discrepancies in communicating information that he had previously seen in his 12 years in city government.

Councilor-at-Large Morris Bergman said he hopes city budgeting would give deference to officials who lived in the city, saying there should be a preference for city residents in hiring top employees.

District 2 City Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson said she believed the city had fallen behind in pay compared to the positions for other cities, but disagreed with the comparison between union and nonunion employee pay.

"While I give the manager credit for doing the contract negotiations, and yes, people have received salary increases, they're not at the same level as some of these increases that we're seeing here tonight," Mero-Carlson said. "And that's the piece that I worry about: What kind of message are we sending to ... the rank-and-file members who work in the City of Worcester?"

Mero-Carlson said she does not believe any union member has gotten a 17% pay increase and hopes the city was fair to all the department heads with salary increases.

District 5 City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj said she was baffled by the conversation, saying she trusts Batista's judgment and rationale and does not believe his predecessors have been questioned to the same extent.

"I truly feel the city manager has done a really good job at describing his rationale. We're the ones that voted to get him the salary that he did," Haxhiaj said. "What I see him do is trying to get a very thoughtful, data-based approach."

While he had similar concerns about rank-and-file pay, Councilor-at-Large Khrystian King was frustrated with the conversation, saying he believed the City Council had tied Batista's hands and set a precedent for pay scale when it negotiated a higher salary for City Clerk Nikolin Vangjeli, whose department is under City Council purview, in two sets of negotiations between 2022 and 2024.

"We did that, [the city clerk is] a department head. And we're sitting here squabbling why the manager's doing the same to keep pace with the bar that we set," King said. "It's ludicrous to me quite frankly."

King has raised concerns about the handling of contract negotiations with Vangjeli in prior City Council meetings. According to Batista's memo, Vangjeli is set to make $198,624 for fiscal 2025, or about 70.1% of Batista's salary. King said the City Council has raised Vangjeli's salary by $51,000 over the two-year period.

Mayor Joseph M. Petty ended the discussion by saying he has confidence in Batista's recommendations and thought the memo was a good explanation.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Proposed raises for Worcester department heads questioned by council