The salary increase for the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for the city became a contentious topic of discussion during Baldwin’s City Council meeting Tuesday evening.
The discussion started out civil enough but was bathed in confusion. No one had a copy of the employment contract. It was assumed that it was with the City Attorney’s office.
As part of the employment contract, an annual review must be performed by the council and discussed with Chief Administrative Officer Emily Woodmaster. Councilmember Alice Venter asked Woodmaster how she felt about her review. Mayor Stephanie Almagno said, “She did not receive it. It is with legal.”
Venter then asked, “How are we going to discuss this?” She added, ”This is going to kind of hinder our discussion of the budget too.”
Venter was not clear as to why the review was sent to legal. Almagno said that it was legal’s recommendation that it be sent to him. Venter said that it was not legal’s responsibility but the council’s responsibility to handle the review process.
It was agreed by the council that Almagno would complete the review process this week and meet with Woodmaster so they could complete her annual review.
Once it was clear to the council that they were not going to be able to discuss the elements of the contract, they decided to move forward with discussing the salary within the contract. The need for that was to ensure that the increase in the CAO’s salary was included in the budget.
Salary increase
The CAO salary discussion was spearheaded by Councilmember Alice Venter. She explained to the council that Woodmaster has not asked for an increase in her salary. “For the record, the CAO has not asked for anything,” Venter said.
As Venter continued, she became more agitated and began addressing her comments towards Councilmember Joseph Satterfield. Directing her comments to Satterfield, she referenced a pay study completed by the city last year. “The pay study does not include anything but the CAO position,” she said.
Almagno said that the salary for the position was looked at closely with the pay study. One factor was should the occupant of the position become incapacitated for whatever reason, the city would have to offer a marketable salary to recruit a replacement for the position.
Venter stated that the CAO currently is the lowest paid in the county. She added that she is also the only woman CAO among the cities.
“The CAO salary, at the moment, is $104,000. I proposed a 10% increase,” Venter said.
She explained that the city was doing away with paid time off (PTO) for salaried employees but included the pay in the salaries for those exempt employees. She added that the dollar amount equivalent for the CAO position was $6,000.
Venter also said that all of the employees would be receiving a 2.5% cost of living adjustment to their salaries this coming year due to inflation. She factored all of the increases and adjustments for the CAO salary. The CAO salary, according to Venter, will increase from $104,000 to $123,410.
She explained the various duties that the CAO has to perform stating that the CAO has to manage a city that is in two counties.
Salary contention
“I will fight you over the CAO contract. I will fight you over the salary. Because it’s the right thing to do,” Venter said to the council.
Satterfield explained that he had a discussion with another CAO in the county. In that discussion, he learned that Mark Musselwhite had several years of experience in government as a councilmember and a Mayor.
He added the similarities of the CAO position between Demorest and Baldwin, stating that Demorest does not have an HR Director nor a Finance Director and he performs those duties as does Woodmaster. Satterfield also stated that Demorest manages approximately 7,500 water accounts compared to Baldwin’s approximately 1,900. The only difference he saw was Baldwin collects taxes from two counties.
Almagno said that it’s more than collecting taxes. It’s managing two sets of numbers, tax digests, ARPA funds from two counties, and SPLOST from two counties.
“You can’t compare city to city to city. Every city is unique,” Almagno told Satterfield.
