Ashland councilor: City has ‘sufficient financial cushion’ to pay employees ‘fairly’ based on long overdue compensation study

By Bob Kaplan

The City Council had two meetings this week to discuss salary scales and benefits for two-thirds of the city’s employees – those represented by three unions, as well as non-represented employees (including managers). 

Monday’s study session was an opportunity to dig into details and clarify options in a format that’s less formal than the Tuesday business meeting where we needed to make motions and vote. 

I’m grateful to the few dozen or so people who emailed the council to share their opinions and the folks who set up a time to meet with me for some additional back and forth to explore the issues more fully.

My engagement on staff salary scales began in 2021 when I was a member of the Citizens’ Budget Committee. Personnel expenses represent a large portion of the city’s budget, and I was appalled to learn we had not evaluated the compensation structure since 2008.

The 2021-2023 budget and salary negotiations and decisions were based on the consumer price index without asking whether the over 260 jobs had changed and if the salaries still made sense. Unfortunately, the council didn’t fund a compensation study at that time, but in spring of 2023 the Citizens’ Budget Committee and City Council included a comprehensive compensation and classification study in the budget.

I’ve participated in a few “comp and class” studies during my career. It provides valuable insight into the cost structure of an organization’s personnel, so it’s an important tool to inform salary negotiations and decisions with both unionized and non-represented employees. A comp and class study helps an organization clarify how competitive it is—and wants to be—within its relevant labor market. It helps address internal equity issues as well. 

After a competitive request for proposal process, the city chose McGrath Human Resources Group to conduct our comp and class study, and it was completed in March. I’ve spent a lot of time with the McGrath report. It’s unusually comprehensive, which is appropriate given that it’s been more than 15 years since the last one. I was satisfied with the quality of the assessment and the significant work that went into reclassifying positions and standardizing pay scales across the organization with eight steps each. I was also impressed by the clarity and professionalism of Victoria McGrath when she presented the report and answered councilors’ questions in May.

In our meeting, McGrath confirmed the scales were designed to fit at the 50th percentile among comparable cities and utilities. Frankly, the 50th percentile is lower than I’ve seen in other situations, but I think it’s a reasonable approach considering benefits and other non-financial factors, as well as fiscal realism for the city. So after careful consideration, I’m strongly in favor of implementing the new scales.

Considering the Objections

I’ve heard two types of objections to implementing the new salary scales this year followed by annual cost of living adjustments in 2026 and 2027. 

Economic uncertainty

Some folks say, quite reasonably, that we live in uncertain times. The federal government is slashing social assistance that will have direct and indirect impacts on our local economy and the City. Some say, again appropriately, that we need to look beyond the next three years towards long-term sustainability. 

I agree with these concerns. Even before the current chaotic federal policy environment, I’ve been insisting on regular clear-eyed assessment of our finances. Our systems aren’t perfect, but since my first month on the council in January 2023, I’ve seen steady improvement. We’ve returned to having quarterly reviews of the city’s finances, and I think it’s great that residents can go online and track actual spending against projections and prior years’ spending using the city website’s interactive financial reporting feature. I use this tool frequently.

Fortunately, the City’s fiscal position has been improving, not deteriorating, over the last few years. We have healthy balances in every fund, well above what’s required by our financial policies, despite not having raised utility rates since 2019 (2021 for electricity). We’ve accumulated over $2 million in our unallocated General Reserve Fund—compared to less than $40,000 as recently as May 2022. The total of fund balances at the end of May 2025 was almost $89 million compared with $71 million just three years earlier. This evidence of prudent financial management, along with the City’s extraordinarily low level of debt, are part of why Moody’s recently reaffirmed a high investment grade Aa3 credit rating for the City’s creditworthiness for long-term debt instruments. That’s among the highest in Oregon.

So, while I agree we can’t predict what the future will hold, I feel confident we have sufficient financial cushion to proceed reasonably, including by investing in cleaning up our salary structure and paying our employees fairly based on the comp and class study that targets the middle of comparable cities.

Recent cuts to parks

The second objection I’ve heard has to do with recent increases in special fees and cuts in parks programs. How can we give staff a raise when we’re cutting Parks & Rec programs? 

Again, I’m sympathetic with this complaint. I expressed my view during the budget committee meetings that the projections for revenues and expenses over the next two years are too conservative (i.e. under-estimating revenue and over-estimating expenses). But reasonable people can disagree, and the Citizens Budget Committee and City Council both approved the biennial budget based on these projections, including increases in two existing fees and one new fee all narrowly defined for special purposes. In addition, the council asked the Parks & Rec Commission to look for savings over the next two years when the Parks & Rec fee sunsets.

The wildfire risk reduction fee has lost purchasing power to inflation since it was created several years ago, and we need a robust extra funding stream to act on critical elements of the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. I strongly supported this increase. 

I was less convinced about repurposing and increasing the public safety fee, but I agree with my colleagues that we need to shore up the finances of our ambulance services while we evaluate the new single role program and how it interacts with our fire department. Parks are integral to our community values, so I supported a new fee to minimize cuts and add stability to our parks and recreation programs while our Parks & Rec Commissioners set priorities and look for efficiencies and savings.

So while I too feel consternation about the impact increased fees and cuts have on our community and would have preferred a different route, it doesn’t follow that we should turn our backs on the sound structural steps needed to fix our compensation system and improve predictability of personnel costs through FY28. I sincerely believe that any short-term “savings” that would come from disregarding the study would be outweighed by increased costs over the medium term—and also ignore festering inequities within our team.

In sum

I know many of our neighbors are struggling to pay their bills and are worried about the future. Holding on to a mish-mash of out-dated pay scales is a false solution. While we had a difficult meeting, and the council’s vote was split, I’m confident we stand united in our respect for our staff and our commitment to working together for the benefit of our whole community. 

Email Ashland City Councilor Bob Kaplan at bob@council.ashland.or.us. Email letters to the editor and viewpoint submissions to news@ashland.news.