Meridian City Hall

As the Meridian City Council moves into budget planning for the upcoming fiscal year, a recently completed salary study has given council members plenty to think about.

In a work session Thursday, Matthew Peterson, research associate at the John. C. Stennis Institute of Government & Community Development, shared his organization’s findings with the council and city officials.

Over the course of about six months, the Stennis Institute gathered data on more than 180 jobs throughout the city. It then sent surveys to other cities of similar size to Meridian across the southeast region to see how Meridian’s pay measures up to what other cities are paying.

Data presented at the work session showed how Meridian’s salary measures up as a percentage of the mean, or a percentage of the average of all the responses. Peterson urged city officials not to approach the data as if the city were underpaying or overpaying but as an indicator of potential areas where the city should take a closer look.

In general, he said, positions that were in the 90%-100% range of the average salary were probably fine. Those in the 80%-89% range could use a closer look, and any position where the salary is 79% of the mean or less should be examined.

For example, Peterson said, Meridian’s mayor is paid a salary of $80,000. The average salary for mayors in cities that responded to the survey was $100,710, he said, which puts Meridian’s mayor pay at 79.44% of the average.

Some positions within the city also have a wide range of pay for workers who have the same job title. That is not unusual, Peterson said, and is normally explained by seniority or advanced certifications. An equipment operator who has 15 years on the job will naturally be paid more than an equipment operator who has five weeks experience.

In the police department, the Police Chief’s salary of $84,500 was 84% of the $100,000 average salary, Peterson said. Most officer pay in both the criminal investigation division and patrol were in the high 80 or low 90 percent range.

Regular police officers in the patrol division, however, are paid between $36,000 and $40,000 per year, Peterson said, which is just 76% of the average.

A 2022 study of first responder pay in Mississippi done by the Stennis Institute shows the average salary for a police chief in a city with more than 25,000 residents is $93,465. Pay for officers averages out at $46,259.

“The police department as a whole is definitely below the average,” he said.

Maintenance workers and custodians across city departments also came in below average in pay.

“We’re under,” Councilman George Thomas said. “Particularly with the lower paid people, we’re very under.”

While pay may be under the average from the Stennis Institute’s study, Thomas said the news was not as bad as he expected it to be. Once fringe benefits such as insurance, vacation, sick leave and retirement are added in, he said Meridian gets pretty close to that average salary mark.

The next step for the city will be to look at its job descriptions, pay bands, grades and titles to clean up some of the wiggle room developed since the Stennis Institute’s previous study in 2016.

Human Resources Director Chrissy Walker said the city’s pay grades and pay bands do not match up. Pay grades are a remnant of a step-based system were seniority and cost of living raises would bump employees up slightly each year.

The city doesn’t have a step system anymore, Walker said, but every job is still assigned a pay grade. What those pay grades mean as far as an employee’s skill level or capabilities is unknown, she said.

Should the council choose to go in that direction, Peterson said the Stennis Institute would be happy to work with the city over the next fiscal year to meet with staff, edit job descriptions, examine where pay bands should be to be competitive and develop a scale for pay grades that is easy for both supervisors and city employees to understand.

The project would likely take several months, Peterson said, which makes it impossible to get done prior to the end of this budget year, which ends Sept. 30. However, he said, the work could be done over the next year for the council to have as it works to set the budget for fiscal year 2025.