Reacting to the findings of a recent study, the Somerville Board of Aldermen voted recently to enact salary increases for nearly 150 non-union city officials, including substantial raises for Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone and the aldermen themselves.
The raises are meant to rectify inequalities in pay compared to other cities and to combat job retention troubles.
But not everybody approves.
Curtatone's annual paycheck jumped from $85,000 to $124,000. City aldermen will receive $25,000, up from $16,500, and citizens serving on the school committee will make $10,507 instead of $7,700.
These are the first salary adjustments Somerville's non-union officials have seen in five years.
Director of the Executive Office of Communications for Somerville Thomas Champion said that the aldermen voted in response to the board's recommendations, and that monetary incentives are a minimal factor in city government.
"If elected officials did it for the money, no one would run," he said. "The hours are punishing, the responsibilities are enormous, and the level of public scrutiny, and oftentimes criticism, is such that you have to be motivated by other than monetary reasons if you want to run for office."
Still, the pay boosts have fomented anger among rank-and-file Somerville firefighters and police officers, who have been picketing for new contracts after a two-and-a-half-year period without them. They have said that the city has been largely unresponsive to their financial needs.
"I just think we're also deserving of a raise," Somerville Firefighters Local 76 President Jay Colbert said. "Obviously public safety is not a priority [of the administration]."
Champion, though, said that there is no relationship between collective bargaining for unionized employees and compensation for non-union employees like the mayor or aldermen.
He also pointed to increased money for training and equipment for many unionized employees and the recent promotion of police officers to the rank of sergeant.
"The idea that the only way you can measure an administration's commitment to public safety is through salary levels is one I would question," Champion said.
Bent emphasized that the pay adjustments do not only apply to the elected officials who are the focal point of public opinion, but also to the nearly 150 other workers who are long overdue for raises.
"We were working on 150 non-union employees who hadn't gotten a raise in five years," he said. "We were trying to get them fair and equitable salaries."
A city ordinance mandates that the Municipal Advisory Board, whose members are appointed by the mayor and the aldermen, evaluate city officials' salaries every two years and grant raises to keep pay levels on par with their union counterparts.
"In the past, the study was done on like positions, and they would by percentage give a raise based on what the union employees got," Board Chairman Tom Bent said.
Bent, who has served on the board through three different administrations, said this year's analysis represents a more complete picture because the city asked for a more detailed recommendation including a job classification system and salary ranges.
"The idea of the salary ranges is that, if a position opens and someone less experienced needs to fill it, then they can start at the bottom of the range and make more as they become more experienced," Bent said.
Over a period of 15-16 months, consultants interviewed city officials and requested that they write job descriptions, allowing the board to standardize evaluations of city employees within a hierarchy that ranks employees from part-time to executive.
"We wanted to design a qualification system that would standardize human resources for Somerville," Bent said.
In an attempt to expand the scope of the report, the board for the first time examined the salaries of officials in other Massachusetts cities, finding that Somerville falls in the low end of the spectrum.
Bent said that this had caused a drain on qualified workers, as city employees often were lured away by more lucrative jobs after a few years in Somerville.
"A part of the recommendation was working to improve recruitment and retention," Bent said.
