North Pole council adopts 3% raise with 30-step pay scale

The North Pole City Council voted 7-0 Monday to give city employees a 3 percent raise and widened the pay scale to 30 steps so senior workers move forward instead of dropping back. A separate amendment that reshaped the scale passed 4-3. The ordinance takes effect Jan. 1, 2027.

Under the original version, employees past step 10 would have had their steps adjusted backward to whichever step sat closest to their new pay. Mayor Larry Terch said the pay ordinance will cost the city around $375,000 a year.

Terch drafted the amendment and said he worked on it with Chief Financial Officer Will Hawryluk over three weeks. It leaves steps 1 through 10 unchanged. Most employees move one step a year through step 10 and two steps a year after that. Fire department employees move two steps a year after step 8. Anyone past step 30 continues at 1.5 percent per step.

"Instead of going back steps, we have increased it to 30 steps so that we can move up as we go instead of going back," Hawryluk said. He said employees dropped five or six steps when the city last changed pay for utilities and public works.

Fire Chief Heineken said the dollar result is about the same either way, but "it's a morale issue to tell somebody that's at range 16, hey, now you're at range 12."

Police Chief Jed Smith said one employee worried a new hire could land right where a bumped-back sergeant would have been. "They're not nitpicky," Smith said of his staff.

Councilman David Brandt called the back-step issue temporary, saying a future council could raise the 1.5 percent rate to 3 percent without dropping the two-step rule. He voted against the amendment and for the final ordinance.

The council also reconsidered an earlier vote and, 4-3, set the mayor's salary at $24,000 a year with no benefits. Councilwoman Rolfe noted city code caps the mayor's raise at 2 percent. Brandt asked the clerk to show in the codified chart "that the mayor's salary is a 2% increase and then everybody else is at 3%."

Councilman Jordan Schuster raised a written complaint about pay gaps between positions. Hawryluk called that a separate issue tied to each employee's experience and job description. Schuster said it would be addressed at budget time.