Princeton Council Introduces Salary Ordinance That Includes Pay Increases

dollarThe Princeton Council voted last night to introduce an ordinance that would give town employees who are not represented by labor unions a 1.6 percent pay increase for 2014. Increases are retroactive to January 1.

“This was gone over by personnel committee and reflects modest increases at top end of scale,” Princeton Administrator Bob Bruschi said.

The ordinance also includes salary “harmonizations” for more than a dozen employees in the former Princeton Borough and Princeton Township.

The strategy for harmonizing salaries for the combined municipality was to increase the pay of  lower paid employees to whichever pay rate was higher, in most cases the rate the former township was paying employees. One records clerk who previously worked for Princeton Borough is slated to receive a $10,026 pay increase because of the harmonization.

At the Princeton Council meeting on August 25, the governing body will hold a public hearing on the ordinance and decide whether to adopt it.

The salary ordinance lists pay ranges for each position. The council will still have to pass a salary resolution listing the individual salaries for each employee. The salary ordinance does not include salaries for elected officials. Those salaries will be included in the salary resolution. The governing body is split on whether to give itself raises.

Under the salary ordinance introduced last night, the salary range for department directors is $140,000 to $165,000. The salary range for program managers is $57,000 to $90,000. The salary range for administrative support is $45,000 to $60,000. The town administrator and chief of police titles are not included in the salary ordinance.

The full list of salary ranges and employees affected by the ordinance is available on the town’s website.

There was no public comment on the ordinance. The introduction was approved after 11 p.m. All of the residents who attended the public meeting had left by then.