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Bismarck News

Bismarck salary raises kick in; 21 city employees to reach 6-figures

Written by: Matt Bunk

Nineteen people who work for the City of Bismarck earned six-figure compensation packages in 2011 and at least two more are poised to join that list this year due to salary increases that take effect this month.

Most of the employees who were paid $100,000 or more serve as department heads. At the top of the list was City Administrator Bill Wocken, whose total compensation reached $153,609.41 last year. To see a detailed list of the 100 highest-paid city employees, click here.

(Photo by Matt Bunk) Twenty City of Bismarck employees are poised to collect six-figure compensation packages in 2012.

The employee compensation totals were compiled by the Great Plains Examiner after obtaining public records from the city that show each employee’s base salary or hourly wage and the city’s costs for benefits including retirement plans, health care insurance, life insurance, disability insurance and an employee assistance program.

A state law that was approved by voters in 1994 requires the city to publish the salary of each employee on a bi-weekly or annual basis, though Bismarck has not done so for at least two years.

“It’s certainly something that on advice of our legal counsel we can look into more,” City Commissioner Josh Askvig told the Examiner. “I believe in the people’s right to get access to public information, but is it vitally important that every single employee’s salary is published in the paper? I don’t know. But if the state law requires it, then we should be following the law.”

The Bismarck City Commission voted unanimously to approve the 2012 preliminary budget, which included a 3.5 percent overall increase in employee salaries, during a meeting Sept. 27. The budget was finalized in December, and the raises took effect Jan. 1.

The salary boost will cost the city more than $1 million this year as employee base salaries will account for $30.9 million in this year’s budget. Including the costs of benefits programs, the city expects to pay about $42 million in total employee compensation this year. Those figures don’t include overtime for hourly employees.

Bismarck City Commissioner Parrell Grossman said the employee salaries were set appropriately compared to the salaries of those who work for other cities in North Dakota and the pay scale of comparable positions in Bismarck-Mandan’s private sector.

Plus, Grossman said, the city employees deserved a raise after working so hard during this year’s flood.

“It’s absolutely appropriate,” Grossman said. “Looking back, I think the City of Bismarck faced some very daunting challenges in terms of the flood prevention and recovery. I feel that the city employees stepped up tremendously, in some instances working long hours and filling in other areas outside of their regularly assigned work responsibilities.”

In 2011, city employees received an overall 2 percent increase. The year before, it was 3.5 percent.

Grossman, who handles the city’s budget as part of his portfolio, said the city must make market adjustments due to a growing economy that’s being driven by oil production in the western part of the state.

“We are experiencing a very strong state and local economy, and the city has to compete with other employers in attracting and retaining the best candidates,” he said. “I don’t know that the people who work for the Bismarck Police and Fire departments would go to Dickinson or Williston, but there are some city employees who could go to the western part of the state and receive compensation higher than what’s offered in Bismarck.”

Not all city employees will receive a 3.5 percent raise this year; that figure reflects the overall increase to the city’s payroll, but the individual raises will be based at least partly on performance. Some employees may get less than that, while others may get more.

That part appeals to City Commissioner Mike Seminary, a budget hawk who has questioned whether the city needs to boost salaries every year to stay competitive.

“I don’t have a problem with 3.5 percent, considering the way it works,” he said. “Performance is taken into account, and if someone is delivering then I think we should compensate them for it.”

Seminary said he doesn’t like comparing Bismarck’s compensation packages with other public sector employers. He said it’s the private-sector comparison that matters most, and Bismarck stacks up fairly well due to fringe benefits such as a retirement plan that requires the city to contribute 10 percent of an employee’s salary to their pension fund – 13.2 percent for police department employees.

“We have really great employees and they should be compensated fairly,” he said. “But there aren’t many places in the private sector that pay for a Cadillac-style health care plan and offer an automatic 10 percent retirement contribution without a match.”

The average base salary for the 844 full-time city employees in 2011 was $40,368.68.

The lowest-paid city employees earned an hourly wage of $7.63, or $15,870.40 per year. Seven employees of the Bismarck Public Library earned that amount. Conversely, Library Director Kristi Harms earned a base salary of $82,000.10 and a total compensation package of $102,786.17.

Meanwhile, each of the four city commissioners received $10,988.90 from the city last year, while Mayor John Warford received $20,146.88.

-Matt Bunk is publisher of the Great Plains Examiner.

 

 

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Comments

  1. The statement by Seminary that there is no required employee match for the pension plan is incorrect. Most city employees are required to contribute 5% of their gross salary to the pension plan. I believe that percentage is even higher for police and fire department personnel.

    As far as performance being taken into account when raises are determined, not so much. The process of determining raises is flawed at best and down right corrupt at its worst. A great follow-up story would be to show the percentage of the raises received by the top 20 compared to the employees making $40,000 to $50,000.

  2. You’re missing several people from your list. Where’s the two Police Deputy Chiefs? I have to think they make more than any of the Lieutenants, Sergeants, or Officers listed.

    • Thanks for pointing that out. The two deputy chiefs were inadvertently omitted from the list. Here’s the information: Dan Donlin, deputy chief of the Bismarck Police Department, makes a base salary of $75,104.64 and benefits of $22,157.69 for total annual compensation of $97,262.33. Fred Wooten, deputy chief of the Bismarck Police Department, makes a base salary of $79,432.60 and benefits of $22,734.06 for total annual compensation of $102,166.66.

  3. I don’t think many of Bismarck’s top 100 will be going to the western part of the state for more money.

  4. The fact that Bunk left out that the current rate of inflation in the U.S. is 3.39% per year makes it seem like an intellectually dishonest effort to create controversy where there isn’t any (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=u.s.%20rate%20of%20inflation, retrieved 1.11.12). With this fact in mind, the 3.5% raise the city employees stand to receive is only nominally above maintaining salaries at constant dollar level. Is that extra .11% supposed to account for the backbreaking work they did all spring and summer during the flood?

    While there is a significant disparity between entry-level hourly wage positions and directors with substantial supervisory and budgetary responsibilities, this should surprise or outrage no one. When you compare the compensation of a position requiring no education or experience with one requiring an advanced education and years of managerial experience, and expect no one to notice, you manage only to insult your readership.

    Comparing salaries of commensurate positions makes far more sense. Subsequently, I did a couple searches for job openings for some of the same positions in cities of a similar size. Some have comparable salaries while others pay quite a bit more. For example, our long-time police chief, Keith Witt, currently has a salary of $94,453.58. The same position in De Soto, TX, is offering a starting pay of $125K + benefits (http://www.policeforum.org/employment/, retrieved 1.11.12).

    Looking at the national picture, this should come as no surprise. Bunk cites that the average base salary for Bismarck’s city employees in 2011 was $40,368.68. He fails to note that this is actually lower than the 2010 national average salary of $44,410, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000, retrieved 1.11.12). Adjusting this to constant dollars would give us $46,074.74 for 2011 (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=44%2C410&year1=2010&year2=2011, retrieved 1.11.12). This places Bismarck city employees’ earnings at 12.4% below the national average.

    It seems bizarre to attack the City of Bismarck for striving to keep up with competitive wages or for keeping compensation in step with inflation. Maybe a better article would cover all the employers in Bismarck who are lagging in competitive wages or how we can do more to recruit quality young professionals to the area.

    On a final note, as a nerdy, introverted kid I spent a lot of time in my local public library. The librarians are the ones who really made me feel like I belonged somewhere. They are also the ones who taught me how to do proper research so I could become an informed citizen capable of pointing out the fallacies of articles such as this.

    • Bill, thanks for your note. Comparing the situation in Bismarck to the national averages is one way of looking at this, but the cost of living in most other places is much higher than in North Dakota. So it’s not really apples to apples.
      As for the flood, there’s no doubt city employees worked long, hard hours to minimize damages. The city ended up paying about $4 million in overtime last year, largely as a result of that hard work. And most people would agree that the employees deserved it. But don’t forget that thousands of volunteers also did backbreaking work filling sandbags without any payment at all. That’s just what good people do when there’s a natural disaster.
      In any case, I’m glad you chimed in. The story was not meant to “attack” anyone. I never said the wages were too high or too low. I just presented public information so that the people of Bismarck can make up their own minds.

  5. It is also very interesting that Seminary uses the term ‘cadillac’ style health plan. It is a nationally recognized term for health care plans that are out of line for costs. They have also been recognized as an issue that causes financial problems for companies or municipalities. If you look at the costs of the city plan it really isn’t out of line and does meet the standard to be categorized as ‘cadillac’. When coupled with his comments on the pensions it seems Seminary is either uneducated to the benefits to city employees or is intentionally giving misleading information. Either way it is disappointing.

    But David you are right… the top 100 probably aren’t going anywhere!!

  6. Just a comment: latest U.S. Census data pegged the ND cost of living index at 99.9%–so I would say it IS apples to apples. Heck, I’d say its even closer than comparing granny smith to gala! Common misconcepsion that it’s cheaper than avg to live here, but I still live paycheck to paycheck. Great conversation, guys!

    • Hi, Patty. Can you provide a link to the Census data you are referring to? The latest figures I found on the Census Bureau’s site (from 2010) show Bismarck at 95 percent of the national average. And housing costs, which are the biggest factor for most people, are 91 percent of the national average. http://search.census.gov/search?q=cost+of+living+index+and+Bismarck&btnG=Search&entqr=0&ud=1&output=xml_no_dtd&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&client=default_frontend&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&btnG.x=0&btnG.y=0&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&site=census

  7. Ooops… meant to say it does NOT meet the standards for a cadillac plan categorization.

    Proofread, proofread, proofread… my bad.

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  9. I must say that Joe’s comments are accurate, ‘The process of determining raises is flawed at best and down right corrupt at its worst.’ His suggestion to ‘look at the percentages of raises received by the top 20′ will show a very interesting picture , most likely that upper management is more concerned with their own self-interest. And who is it that is doing their evaluations?

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