Tallahassee City Commissioners are considering employee pay raises and employee cost increases as part of their spending plan for the upcoming budget year.
In initial talks regarding the upcoming city budget, staffers suggested a 3-percent employee pay raise. But Commissioner Gil Ziffer says in a tight budget year, he’d like to consider that number carefully.
“I know the consumer price index is not 3-percent and every year we build in the 3-percent for employee pay raises and I’m going to be that person again who says that I’d like to keep that at 2-percent. And I think that’s pretty generous. Certainly it’s not as much as a lot of our employees deserve, but quite frankly, we’re $4.5 million in the hole and that would represent about a $600,000 savings as I recall,” Ziffer says.
Meanwhile, city officials are expecting an increase in healthcare costs—some of which will be passed on to employees. Mayor Andrew Gillum wants to ensure any additional costs to employees are made up for.
“My one issue with that is you’re talking about a 2 or 3 percent increase or pass of healthcare costs onto our workforce, it needs to balance out. This isn’t a take back,” Gillum says.
City officials say they’re still working to nail down precisely how healthcare costs will change. Commissioners are expecting to revisit the issue during upcoming budget talks.
