Macon City Council Passes New Pay Scale

Two contradicting themes were brought to the table of Macon City Council Tuesday night as the city pay scale debate continued.

 Some council members said a flawed pay scale is better than no pay scale, while others said the pay scale was unfair to general employees.

After a 9 to 5 vote the new pay scale passed on Tuesday night, but not without a good deal of backlash.

“What makes you think that these promises will be kept on trying to do anything with this pay scale,” said Macon City Councilwoman, Elaine Lucas.

“After years and years of saying we want a pay scale. Here we have a pay scale and it’s just not good enough,” said Macon City Councilman, Erick Erickson.

Back and forth Macon City Council members debated Mayor Robert Reichert’s proposed city pay scale, the same issues came up in the meeting and the usual responses returned the favor.

Those for the pay scale believe now is the time to move forward and stand behind the motive of helping quality employees stay in the city’s fire and police department.

Members against say the general employees are being left out of this pay scale and the rich are getting richer, a thought that Anthony Collins, who works for the city, agrees with.

“The people that need the money they’re not getting the money that they need, the people that already have the money they’re getting all the money,” said Collins.

The pay scale will increase the salaries of more than 400 city employees, and will cost 2 point 4 million dollars. 80 percent of the increased pay will go to the fire and police departments. Council members who voted in favor of the pay scale say the city has gone too long without a proper pay scale.

“The bottom line is that we need to something here and what’s proposed right now is better than status quo,” said councilman, Tom Ellington.

Mayor Reichert says the pay scale is a work in progress, and he’s excited to see it pass through council.

“We’ve obviously been discussing the concerns with different council members have about different parts of it. To be perfectly honest the vote fell out about like we thought it would,” said Reichert.

Council members who voted for the new pay scale say it’s impossible to make everyone happy in the change and for today, Anthony Collins is one in the disappointed crowd.

“It’s a simple case of mind over matter, it don’t look like they mind and it don’t look like the general employees matter at all,” said Collins.

Mayor Reichert says the scale will go into effect at the first of the year and funding for the pay increase must still be found.