Columbia city employees could get $1,000 as “morale boost”

City Manager Mike Matthes lamented the city’s inability to pay for significant raises for city employees.

“I’m beginning to worry more and more about this great city staff and how engaged they are,” Matthes said at his fiscal year 2018 budget presentation on Friday. “Even the best of us get a little tired.”

The city manager said the slow growth in wages for city employees has lowered morale the last several years. In his proposed budget for next year, he suggested the Columbia City Council approve $1.1 million to pay city staff a one-time stipend of $1,000. The money would come from savings the city council had in 2016.

Matthes said the stipend would serve as a both a “thank you” to staff for their work, and an acknowledgement of the wage situation.

“If there’s never a raise, you know, the next time somebody tries to poach me, that’s pretty attractive,” Matthes said.

Lieutenant Travis Gregory, president of the local chapter of the International Association of Firefighters, said the idea wasn’t bad, but wasn’t a long-term solution to morale issues. Firefighters in Columbia received a 17-cent an hour raise last year, Gregory said, but wages haven’t increased that much the last several years. That’s caused many firefighters to leave for other departments to get higher pay.

“It makes it hard for younger guys to stick around here when they know that they’re only chance of a raise is actually going to be through promotions and not through raises,” Gregory told ABC 17 News.

The city council approved a $8,000 raise for Matthes in 2015. Council members said the raise was in line with the city’s policy of bringing employees’ salaries toward the median for city managers in comparable cities.

The Columbia City Council will need to approve the idea, and the budget, by October 1. Public hearings on the budget begin at their August 21 council meeting.