Calexico workers get pay raises By GREG HOLT, Staff Writer
Friday, January 26, 2007 11:49 PM PST
CALEXICO— City employees will receive a pay raise Friday as part of the first phase of salary increases approved by the City Council.
On Thursday, the City Council voted 3-0 to approve the first of three phases that are planned to bring salaries nearly to the level paid by other cities in Imperial County.
A.J. Gaddis, Calexico’s human resources director, said the raises will cost the city $328,995 but will help the city retain its employees and attract strong candidates to fill vacancies.
“We’ve been losing a lot of good people in fire and police, and we’ve had trouble recruiting for management positions,” Gaddis said. “We were recruiting for a development services director for a year before we increased the salary and found a quality candidate in Armando Villa.”
The salary increases were the product of a study completed last fall that determined most of the city’s employees were underpaid, Gaddis said. For example, firefighters were paid 30 percent less in Calexico than in other comparable cities, Gaddis said.
“The benefit for the community is that they are getting better qualified people operating the city’s services. As the city grows, we will have quality decision-makers helping us along,” Gaddis said.
Out of the $328,995 spent on the first phase of salary raises, the city will spend $22,364 on the police department and $13,591 on the fire department, Gaddis said.
Calexico Mayor Lewis Pacheco said high turnover in the Calexico Police Department is directly related to the salaries officers are paid.
“Hopefully we won’t lose our personnel like we have been. We’ve been more like a training ground for new officers,” Pacheco said.
Pacheco said the salaries of city employees were neglected in the past because council members didn’t realize the salaries were below-market.
“The study was the initial spark that convinced us a raise was important,” Pacheco said.
The second and third phases of salary increases will be approved in fiscal year 2007-2008 and again in fiscal year 2008-2009 as long as the city can afford them, City Councilwoman Carmen Durazo said.
“We don’t want to promise our employees a raise and then not be able to deliver it,” Durazo said. “We’ll have a phase two and a phase three as long as there is funding available.”
If you have an account already, just enter your Member ID and Password to access this page.
If you're new to our site, please create a new account.
Register FREE
To use certain features of ivpressonline.com, you must register FREE on the form provided. The Imperial Valley Press’ use of any personally identifying information you provide as part of registration is governed by the following privacy policy:
ivpressonline.com does not, and will not, release your personal information to any third party without your consent. We may, however, share some of the information we gather, in aggregate or demographic form, with advertisers and other partners. That is, we may provide general information about ways people use our site without identifying any particular individuals.
The opinions above are from readers of ivpressonline.com and in no way represent the views of the Imperial Valley Press staff or Schurz Communications Inc.
ivpressonline.com encourages readers to offer their opinions on our local stories. We ask readers keep their comments on topic and avoid derogatory comments about fellow readers. Our goal is to promote a civil discussion about the news.
We will never edit or alter comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct. No comment may contain:
Subscribe Get the Imperial Valley Press every morning at your home or office. Start a subscription for your family, for yourself or give it to someone special. Click here.
Text Message AlertsReceive text message alerts on breaking news, latest updates, sports scores, offers and much more on your cellphone or PDA. Sign up here.
RegisterRegister free and start receiving email alerts on breaking news, a sneak preview of upcoming stories, reminders and much more. Click here to begin.
About UsWant to know more about the Imperial Valley Press? Want to contact us? Get general and contact information. Click here.
