Amador County – The Ione City Council on Tuesday approved two contracts with city employees and the city police force for the next 2-and-a-half years. The contracts make individual adjustments on salaries to pull some employees up the regional industry standard while lowering others and keeping those at par on the same track. Percentages of raises range from 2 to 5 percent for the city’s 10 Service Employees International Union Local Number 1021 members, while the raises also vary for the 5 employees of the Ione Police Department. City Manager Kim Kerr said that excludes herself, Police Chief Michael Johnson and Finance Director Mark Smith, who are all contract employees, though she said the city is working to make the chief and finance director positions also salaried, non-contract posts. Katie Kaneko of Koff & Associates reported on her analysis of all city employees. She said she found “one base salary significantly above the market median,” 6 were within 5 percent of the market range and 5 were below market. She said salaries above the market range would get no raise and would be equalized. Kerr said that the discrepancy was because of an accounting specialist position that had a job description change to accounting technician, with a lower salary. Councilman Jim Ulm asked how police market salaries were determined. Kerr said Calaveras and Amador police forces were surveyed and the city did the work for Kaneko. Kaneko said the analysis was done by building a salary schedule with job descriptions. Job titles were ignored and they looked for “70 percent likeness” among duties. Kerr said police officers were 20 percent below market in salary and the report and the city “looked to see how (it) could get that corrected.” They are implementing the raise schedule over 2 ½ years and those salaries will be adjusted by July 1, 2010. The council approved the two contracts on 5-0 votes. Story by Jim Reece (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).