(Photo: Wikimedia)
The Hillsdale City Council voted to adopt a resolution supported by the Hillsdale Board of Public Utilities to restructure the way the BPU’s pay structure operates, in a Feb. 20 meeting.
The resolution is part of an initiative lead by City Manager David Mackie to blend the city and the BPU into one cohesive unit.
“We’re looking at moving the city and BPU back together. That was the direction given to me when I was hired in July 2015,” Mackie said. “The city and BPU used to be viewed as two separate entities. The city has basically abandoned that type of power structure for ten years.”
Mackie was a strong advocate for the measure, releasing a memo to the city council to vote in favor of the BPU’s resolution.
“In 1989, the city established the performance-based pay system for all non-union employees,” Mackie said in the memo. “The system has become ineffective and outdated.”
Non-union employees’ starting pay was originally defined by the position they held. Each employee would be eligible for a pay increase every six months for “satisfactory work performance” until an employee had been given a raise four times. The department head was responsible for recommending eligible employees and the city manager would approve the expense or not, based on the department head’s justification.
Mackie wants to bring the BPU under the city’s control by eliminating discrepancies in the way each entity operates. According to Mackie, removing structural differences between the two, like the performance-based pay system, will reduce costs and create more uniform policies for city employees.
