So I was looking at the list of 2015 city salaries last week (DOC:2015-Wages-January) mostly out of curiosity, and decided to pull up my 2014 city salary listing (DOC:Â Sioux Falls SD 2014-Wages-January) to do a couple of comparisons. As I started digging, I started to see a trend, so I gave the spreadsheets to a friend to see if what I was seeing was correct. A couple of days later, I sit in awe at the massive raises given to management this year compared to the very small 2-3% raises given to hourly employees.
Management:
2014 Employees:Â 422
2015 Employees:Â 412
2014 Salaries: $29,627,149.78
2015 Salaries: $29,981,602.74
These numbers are approximate due to calculations done to extrapolate hourly to 2040 hours per year average.
Hourly:
2014 Employees: 1087
2015 Employees: 1063
2014 Wages: $46,619,989.80
2015 Wages: $46,891,405.84
Here is a department breakdown of employees (DOC:2014-15 Department list) You will notice in this document that many of the Street Department employees moved from that department into Engineering. I still haven’t figured that one out yet, but it may be some justification for larger raises.
What is shocking is where the big raises came in, mostly the Fire Department. Which I find curious since there have never been any public reports about how effective the FD has been in putting out fires (preventing extensive damage, etc.), just saving lives. Also the fact that the FD is also responsible for EMS emergency calls, and have a good track record with them, yet we have contracted the most expensive ambulance service for the city.
But other departments like the Health Director, Library, Mayor’s office and PD also rolled in some big ones. While the graphic below shows the ‘Big Hitter List’ if you look at the entire city listing (DOC: 2014-15 Combined Salary List) You will see that many in management got over a 7% raise, almost DOUBLE what the hourly wage earners received.
Strangely enough, there seems to be a correlation between departments making the ‘Big Wins’ list and management getting raises. Not sure if this is a coincidence, but I am guessing it is.
I also must point out, this is a simple spreadsheet only comparing WAGES & SALARIES between the two years and doesn’t go into details about bonuses and does not include benefits and pension plans. Wages only, and the percentage increases are based solely on the information provided from the City of Sioux Falls in the two wage tables.
I’ve been told by a city official that certain formulas are used by HR to determine what a salary increase should be when moving up in the department and title changes, and how it compares against the private sector. But I can tell you from reading this preliminary report, I have no idea what that would be, especially when you see a landfill employee getting a $18K a year raise simply by going to salary vs. hourly – it almost looks like an accounting error, and very well could be.
What is disheartening about this review is that the city really is picking ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ when it comes to it’s employees and management (some managers only received a 3% raise). This is something that is more prevalent in the corporate world and not in the public sector where achievements are measured differently.
I guess this is what we get when our city is run like a business.
UPDATE (1): Just when we thought the fun was over with crunching the numbers, Poly brings up a point about the temp staff. Here is breakdown of them (DOC: Temporary employees per year )
l3wis 
