Lawton City Council to decide on new pay scale for department heads

Proposals to implement a new pay scale for City of Lawton top-level administrators and set a new policy on police escorts for funeral processions will be discussed by the City Council today.

A decision on the executive-level pay scale comes after weeks of discussion and analysis by council members and its Employment Matters Committee, and more than two months after a new pay scale went into effect for general employees. That delay is the reason the new executive pay scale is retroactive to July 1, which is the beginning of the new fiscal year and also when the new general employee pay scale went into effect.

Council members delayed action on pay for the city’s top administrators because they wanted more analysis and comparison to pay given to similar positions in peer cities, identified as Edmond, Norman, Broken Arrow, Moore, Enid and Midwest City. The council said repeatedly it wanted comparison not only on pay, but descriptions for jobs that include the city’s department directors and some deputy directors, along with city attorneys. The survey with peer cities found only one of the 32 positions identified as executive level were below peer averages; the exception was the library director, whose position was only $1,130 more than the $92,654 peer average.

The new scale also retains the original recommendation to add a fifth step to what has a four-step scale for executive level employees. All pay was adjusted within those steps, with the fifth step ranging from $123,494.90 to $210,275.10.

City officials have said the salary adjustments stem from an analysis by the JER HR Group that found Lawton was more than 20 percent behind the market average for comparable cities, in terms of employee pay. City administrators have said the issue is contributing to problems with recruiting employees for long-open positions, as well as keeping the employees they already have.

In another policy-related discussion, the council will consider a staff recommendation for a new system to provide police escorts to funeral processions.

Long-standing policy has been for funeral directors to call Lawton Police Department to make arrangements for an escort, but funeral homes run the risk of losing their police escort should something happen. The new policy specifies off-duty officers will now perform that escort duty, with funeral homes making arrangements by calling the police department’s coordinator.

That means off-duty officers would be working in a volunteer capacity and would be paid by the funeral homes ($125 per officer per escort), but those police would be allowed to use city-owned equipment, to include vehicles, traffic control devices and communications equipment.