Our View

Our View

Raises are good, but the money has to come from somewhere

It seems pay raise requests for public employees, particularly those civil servants in West Memphis, crops up on a frequent basis with the latest raises given to police dispatchers using existing funds from the 911 tax.

There is always justification in requesting these raises as in the case of the police dispatchers who, when compared with similar positions in comparable municipalities, were being paid far less.

While we’ve always felt employee pay raises should be considered for employees who excel in their work, show dedication and a willingness to assume new responsibilities, pay increases in government positions seem to be randomly given to every employee regardless of their job performance.

There are those politicians who oversee the spending of our tax dollars , such as West Memphis Councilman Marco McClendon, who is happy with doling it out as if he had just won the lottery. We often wonder how these politicians would act if it were actually their own money instead of ours.

City civil servants seem to have found success in showing up in mass during city council meetings and putting pressure on these politicians for more money, as if they are not already paid some of the highest public employee wages in Crittenden County.

For instance, for the last couple of years street and sanitation workers, as well as West Memphis utility employees, have showed up to fill the council chambers with full intention of putting political pressure on their elected representatives for more money.

We have to commend Councilman James Pulliaum for coming out and saying, just wait just a minute and calling for department managers work out any wage recommendations.

In addition, Pulliaum called for the establishment of a protocol for city managers to follow when recommending raises, instead of having their employees organize as they have been and gather during a public council session.

Let’s remember that just last year all full-time city employees were given a generous blanket bonus as well as raises and now just a few months later are back wanting another across-the-board raise regardless of whether they are adequately doing their jobs or not.

Pulliaum’s suggestion of developing a standard operating procedure for passing out raises to employees is a necessary step that will certainly bring order to an otherwise chaotic situation.

As Pulliaum suggests, city managers need to put together their recommendations, then they should be presented to the city’s finance and human resources staff, and from there these recommendations should head directly to the city council’s budget committee. It is at that point the budget committee should present its findings to the full city council for consideration.

Irresponsible suggestions such as the one McClendon made calling for another round of city-wide blanket raises shows total disregard for the taxpayers money and is nothing more than politically motivated.