Naperville lowers expected pay raises

Nonunion employees in Naperville won't be receiving quite as much of a salary increase as they may have anticipated in the coming fiscal year.

City council and staff members agreed Tuesday to raise the pool of money available for base salary increases by 3.85 percent instead of 4 percent this year in light of a budget crunch. But additional bonuses are still available for the highest-performing employees.

Employees received 4 percent base increases last year and staff had originally recommended the same this year.

Councilman Richard Furstenau said he would have liked to see them even lower than the 3.85 percent they ultimately agreed upon.

The city considered average base-pay increases in other communities when making a recommendation as well as its union employees who are averaging a 4.6 percent base increase this year.

But the top 30 percent of nonunion employees are also eligible for high-performer bonuses, although these too have changed slightly to save the city money.

"We think it should be changed from added to base to an earned annual-bonus award so the compounding effect will not occur there," said Don Carlsen, director of management services.

Union and nonunion employees alike are also eligible for an additional bonus that will be tied to safety incentives.

"We've got to begin to send the signal to our employees both union and nonunion that their work actions and the work actions of our supervisors and our managers is costing this city tremendous amounts of money in general liability, auto liability and workers compensation," Councilman James Boyajian said.

Councilman John Rosanova said he originally wanted to eliminate the bonus pool but feels the end proposal is reasonable.

"These economic times are pretty rough right now, but inflation also seems to be spiking up, so we don't want to go too far in terms of restricting or curtailing the types of raises we're giving, and we certainly don't want a huge gap between union and nonunionized employees," he said. "I think what you've got here is very fair, very appropriate."

The city found a number other cost-saving measures as well, such as reducing overtime for all departments by 5 percent, cutting down on conferences and training and deferring purchase of some equipment.