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PARKERSBURG -- The debate at Tuesday's Parkersburg City Council meeting over funding for a raise for the city surveyor wasn't about whether he deserved it but how it was being done.
Council voted 5-4 to approve a revision to the upcoming 2019-20 budget that will increase Surveyor Randy Sheppard's annual salary by $3,607, on top of the 3.2 percent pay raise he and a number of other municipal employees are set to receive July 1. His total yearly pay will be $51,678.06, Personnel Director Sondra Wallace said Wednesday.
"It's not based on the merit of the individual pay raise; it's based on the procedure," Councilman John Reed, who voted against the measure along with Council President Mike Reynolds and Councilmen J.R. Carpenter and Zach Stanley, said during Tuesday's meeting.
The 3.2 percent raise was included in the upcoming budget by the administration and council. That, along with reclassifications of positions and the establishment of salary ranges to allow the city to adjust wages without changing classifications, was based on a $10,000 salary study received last year.
Reed said that is preferable to giving raises to individual positions here and there.
"That was the proper way to handle this, to get everything back in line," he said. "We're going back and doing exactly what we criticized the last council for doing."
Councilman Jeff Fox said the raise would put the surveyor, who has worked for the city about 15 years, in the middle of the salary range council approved.
"We're not throwing the study out the window. We're using the study, working with the study," he said.
Councilman Zach Stanley said approving the raise could set a bad precedent.
"I think if we do this, it opens a Pandora's box of anyone talking to three council members in order to get themselves a pay raise," Stanley said.
Councilman Dave McCrady said he went to the engineering department about this particular raise; it was not suggested by an employee. The surveyor has been doing additional work while an assistant engineer position remains vacant, he said.
Councilman J.R. Carpenter asked Mayor Tom Joyce his thoughts on the raise. Joyce said he does not oppose a raise for the surveyor, who he described as "a fantastic employee," or other workers but noted it was not proposed by the administration.
"The key thing that council has to remember is there are other employees that feel the same way," he said.
Carpenter and Reed said raises should be proposed by the administration and considered by the Personnel Committee before coming to council.
Prior to Tuesday's meeting, council gathered as the Urban Renewal Authority and took the following actions:
* Voted 8-0, with Stanley absent, to approve the donation of a dilapidated house at 1322 Oak St., provided that the owner can work out an arrangement with his bank to clear an approximately $8,300 lien on the property.
* Voted 6-2, with Reynolds and Councilman Eric Barber opposed, to table action on a vacant commercial property at 2301 Dudley Ave. after the owners submitted a plan of action to the city's Building Enforcement Agency. If code violations are not remedied in 60 days, the authority could reconsider acquiring the property through eminent domain.
* Voted 8-0 to accept the donation of 1910 29th St. and an adjacent parcel. The property owner's late mother owed more than $15,000 to the city, but the majority of that was for demolition of the structure that once stood there, Development Director Rickie Yeager said.
* Voted 8-0 to accept the donation of dilapidated houses at 701 and 703 13th St., near where the city owns other parcels of land.