ELYRIA – City Council’s Finance Committee took a first step toward unweaving longevity pay from the city’s budget, although the longstanding practice is tied down by not just a city ordinance but also by eight collective bargaining contracts.

However, the positions of mayor, auditor and law director are not covered by any union contract.  As a result, those top positions will be the first ones Council will decide on longevity pay for starting in 2012. By the beginning of that year, new terms for each of the elected officials will commence, and with it may come a change to how longevity pay is collected for the positions’ holders.

The Finance Committee, with a vote of 3-2, voted Monday night to send a recommendation to full City Council that calls for the longevity compensation of the mayor, auditor and law director to be capped at its current rate if Mayor Bill Grace, Auditor Ted Pileski and Law Director Terry “Pete” Shilling retain their positions for another term. However, if a new person is elected to any of the three offices, that person would not be entitled to longevity pay.

Council Committee members Vic Stewart, D-at large, and Forrest Bullocks, D-2nd Ward, voted against making the recommendation to change longevity pay for those three positions.

“I didn’t vote no because I don’t think longevity pay doesn’t need to be looked at, but we can’t decide anything after one meeting where there were tons of unanswered questions,” Stewart said. “Let’s get some facts and figures and really look at this thing to come up with something that works.”

Moments later, the same group of committee members voted to table a discussion on how to modify longevity pay for current full-time employees. Council members instead decided to gather more information on how modifying longevity pay would affect union contracts and new hires.

However, with affirmative votes from Council members Tom Callahan, D-at large, Garry Gibbs, R-3rd Ward, and Larry Tanner, D-1st Ward, the matter of repealing the pay for the elected officials had enough votes to head to full Council for consideration. Gibbs sent a request to the Council’s Finance Committee asking for the matter to be discussed as the compensation is draining city coffers.

In Elyria, city employees receive an annual incentive called longevity pay, which can be 1 percent to 20 percent of their base pay. Last year, some longtime city employees received close to $20,000 extra in their paychecks just for keeping their jobs.

In 2008, the city gave out more than $3 million in longevity compensation. It was paid out in all of the city funds where there is payroll, not just the general fund, which is experiencing a deficit.

And even though the city cut huge swaths from its budget this year, city employees will likely get more than $2.9 million in longevity pay in 2009, or about 2.7 percent of the city’s total $108 million budget.

Tanner said he voted to possibly eliminate longevity pay for the top elected officials because, as the leadership in the city, they must lead the way on tough decisions.

“You have to start somewhere, and it’s the leadership that has to bring this home for the people,” he said.

If they don’t, longevity pay will be the downfall of any income tax proposal, Tanner said.

“This came about because it was needed. Years ago, who would pick up trash for $1 an hour when you could go work in a factory for $2.50 an hour?” he said. “But things are not like that now. These are decent-paying jobs with good benefits and have been under a union for a long time.”

Elyria began offering longevity pay across the board on Dec. 27, 1970, after then-City Council passed an ordinance giving the benefit to all full-time employees, excluding elected officials, police officers and firefighters, Shilling said.

Before that ordinance, it was something given only to police and firefighters, who negotiated it into their contracts in the 1960s.

Over the years, other city employees bargained for and earned the right to receive the pay as well.

Today, all full-time city employees are eligible for longevity pay.

Few residents attended the meeting, but those who did and chose to speak had harsh words for Council concerning the matter.

“If longevity pay is to continue, you are not going to get an income tax passed,” said resident Colleen Hurst.

Elyria’s longevity pay system is far larger than that in some other large cities in the area.

In Lorain, city employees also receive longevity pay, but not on the scale of Elyria.

For police officers and firefighters, longevity pay is $225 per year from three years of service to 20 years. For workers in the steelworkers union and nonbargaining unit employees, it’s paid at $180 per year, from five years of service to 20 years. Police dispatchers receive $200 per year from three years of service to 20 years.

With 2,400 employees – three times the number of employees in Elyria, even when you factor in Elyria’s part-time employees – the city of Akron spent nowhere near $3 million on longevity pay in 2008. There, city officials said last year’s total longevity pay was $1.9 million.

In Akron, each bargaining unit negotiates its own longevity compensation. However, the city does not start paying it until full-time employees reach their fifth anniversary.

Doing away with the compensation benefit is not easy. Shilling said City Council must pass a new ordinance repealing the practice. Plus, all of the union contracts would have to be renegotiated, he said.

Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.

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