City approves addition of merit-based pay for administrator

The Clear Lake City Council has unanimously approved a resolution establishing supplemental and merit based pay compensation for its city administrator.

Mayor Nelson Crabb explained that City Administrator Scott Flory’s salary has traditionally been based off of the cost of living increase that city employees receive.

“That’s all well and good, but we felt we needed a more performance based evaluation,” said Crabb.

The Mayor and Mayor Pro-Tem Mike Callanan initially discussed the idea of offering additional merit-based compensation, then shared it with other Council members and some community members.

“There was agreement that we needed to look at (performance),” said Crabb.

The proposal for the supplemental benefits called for the mayor and mayor pro-tem to conduct an evaluation of the city administrator on an annual basis.  The first authorization will extend two-years, calling for another review in February 2020.

Crabb noted the evaluation will consider the salaries of city administrators in other Iowa cities with a population of 10,000 or less.  If Clear Lake’s base pay for the

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administrative position is at or below the average of the five highest paid administrator/manager’s base salary for similar size communities, the employee is eligible for a merit-based salary adjustment of not more than 2.4 percent, but in no case more than $2,500.  The adjustment will be based on the employee performance evaluation, the city’s financial condition and market competitiveness.

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