SALEM–The finance committee further discussed proposed updates to the city’s wage ordinance in its meeting Tuesday.

The proposed updates were tabled for further review during the city council’s Dec. 2 meeting, and would implement annual 3% raises for city employees, as well as language updates to sections outlining the wage of the city’s Service Safety Director. They would also revert a prior change which merged the Health Commissioner and Director of Housing positions, to instead combine the Health Commissioner and Director of Nursing roles.

Councilman and Committee Chair Andrew Null reiterated concerns that the proposed update to the section of the ordinance outlining the wage differential for the Service Safety Director role. Null argued that changing the current ordinance language, which states that after three years of service the director “shall have a wage differential of 5% above the salary of the police and fire chief” to instead read “a wage differential of at least 5% above the salary of the police and fire chief” that the wage would no longer have a maximum rate. Mayor Cyndi Baronzzi Dickey said that the change was necessary to ensure that in the event a new police or fire chief was ever hired at a lower rate than their predecessor that the Service Safety Director’s salary would be unaffected, arguing that the current language would require it be reduced to be 5% higher than the new lower rate.

Councilmen Jeff Stockman, Jim Harrington, and Null all also expressed concerns that the current listed salary range for the Service Safety Director after three years of service was less than the current wage range for the police and fire chiefs, making the ordinance self-contradictory. They argued that the listed wage range should be updated to reflect a range 5% higher than that of the police and fire chiefs, in accordance with the specified wage differential. Dickey argued that doing so would mean that wagewould also need to be updated any time the police and fire chief’s wages increased.

The committee ultimately voted to forward an amended version of the suggested updates which lists the wage range for the Service Safety Director as $3,577.56 to $3,720.65 weekly, with the understanding that it would need to be updated to reflect pay increases to the police and fire chief when a new union contract is approved. In the city council’smeeting later that evening, it voted unanimously to approve the proposed updates.