City considering plans for employee pay raise
By Bobby Bryant, Editor
editor@newsandpress.net
Darlington City Council will consider several options for giving pay raises to the city’s 80-90 employees, but the details remain to be worked out.
Council recently has held three work sessions on the city’s budget for fiscal 2022-23, which must be completed by June 30. One point that council members seemed to agree on was that city employees need and deserve a raise, but exactly how much, and the form of the raise, are still question marks.
Council asked City Manager John Payne to work out several options for members to consider.
Payne said that, essentially, those options would give most employees either a 2, 3 or 5 percent increase, depending on the details of the plan council eventually goes with.
“Everyone on council wants to give a raise,” said Payne.
During budget talks, the city manager initially proposed limiting raises to employees making less than $60,000 a year; it’s unclear whether that idea might remain in the city’s final plan. “I had to pick a number,” Payne said. “I had to draw an arbitrary line in the sand,” and that was $60,000.
Regardless of how council chooses to proceed on pay raises, Payne noted that most city employees will be getting what amounts to a bonus in the form of “premium pay” provided by the federal government’s American Rescue Plan for COVID relief.
One thing complicating budget discussions, Payne said, is that “our costs are going up. Inflation is just killing us.”
