To the Editor:

Misstate an issue often enough and people will be persuaded it is true. This is why Council made the unfortunate decision to deny Avon Lake Municipal Utilities’ (ALMU) ability to promote three administrative staff of an entire work force of 36 because the wage scale was not fixed by council. Although the ALMU is an independent legislative entity, it submits to City Council any items requiring a City ordinance.

ALMU had requested Council to "fix" by city ordinance a personnel management decision of the Board of ALMU. This legislative fix concerned a new job description position and the corresponding “Wage Scale" for the positions of Biller-Bookkeeper 1 and Cashier-Bookkeeper. Both City Council and the Human Resource Committee of Council approved the job descriptions. The ordinance was published with the "wage scale" portion dropped from the request. When Council discovered the omission they renamed the term "wage scale" to "pay increase" in the ordinance.

Despite the testimony before council by Todd Danielson, Chief Utilities Executive, and me to clarify the issue, Council rejected on a 3 to 3 vote of our “wage scale” renamed a pay increase for ALMU administrative staff. The argument used by those that rejected our request was that a 7 percent increase was not appropriate in today’s environment.

It is wrong to define a promotion as a 7 percent pay increase. Of the 7 percent increase 2.75 percent was a previously approved across the board increase for ALMU employees per union contract and 4.25 percent was an increase because of a position change or promotion. The Avon Lake Utilities Board has a policy to promote from within. In the past 20 years the ALMU has tripled production without increasing its lean workforce of 36 individuals and only adding one position of a staff engineer. Meanwhile we have continued to maintain the lowest water and sewer rates to our community. The three staff persons in question had assumed new duties and provided increased services and should have been recognized by promotion years ago. Had they been promoted in a timely manner, the current request by the Board would in fact amount to a 2.75 percent pay increase which is the fixed pay increase amount approved by Council last year.

(Recently, there was a published article) regarding the City’s intent to promote a new Avon Lake Fire Chief from the ranks of three current lieutenants. Given the logic presented in Council, I would assume that they would expect the new chief to work for lieutenant pay. If they did, it would be travesty; as is the decision of Council on Avon Lake Municipal Board’s request.

Our community deserves to have the facts. Let's not punish three deserving employees due to the confusion caused by a few Council representatives misunderstanding the facts.

Charles D. Whitmer

Avon Lake Board of Municipal Utilities