{"id":11200,"date":"2025-12-10T23:24:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T04:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/?p=11200"},"modified":"2025-12-10T23:24:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T04:24:55","slug":"16-percent-raises-non-union-compensation-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/?p=11200","title":{"rendered":"16 Percent Raises: Non-Union Compensation Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Town Council meeting on 12\/8\/2025 a heated public discussion among town officials regarding\u00a0significant, non-union raises\u00a0given to a small group of non-represented employees, including department heads and the town manager. Town Councilor Deb Paul initiates the discussion by demanding the total dollar amount and average percentage of these increases, which is revealed to be\u00a016.8% on average, a much higher rate than the 3-8% increases for unionized workers. The town manager defends the\u00a0high raises\u00a0as a necessary, proactive measure to achieve\u00a0competitive wages\u00a0for essential staff to\u00a0ensure retention and attract new talent, citing the difficulty in hiring and the high cost of losing experienced employees, especially in crucial areas like finance and public works. Other councilors express\u00a0concern that these substantial increases\u00a0were made\u00a0unilaterally\u00a0and too quickly, arguing they should have been implemented more incrementally over time to be more palatable to the community given current budgetary constraints and the town&#8217;s need to cut costs in other areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"16 Percent Raises: Non-Union Compensation Debate\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ANsVHGlZOJU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Town Council meeting on 12\/8\/2025 a heated public discussion among town officials regarding\u00a0significant, non-union raises\u00a0given to a small group of non-represented employees, including department heads and the town manager. Town Councilor Deb Paul initiates the discussion by demanding the total dollar amount and average percentage of these increases, which is&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11201,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11200\/revisions\/11201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townunderground.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}