Created: 4/28/2009 5:28:46 PM 
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- In this economy, a lot of people are forced to pay more attention to their money. They watch the dollars they take home and the ones they pay in taxes to government.
As you might imagine, the largest city in America has a large budget.
For Jacksonville, this fiscal year its $971,441,489.
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Almost a third of that, $317,797,177, pays full-time city salaries.
To put that into perspective, $317 million in ten dollar bills, lined end-to-end would more than stretch all the way from the First Coast to New Zealand.
That's where Richard Wolfe lived, before he moved to Jacksonville 11 years ago. "I don't think taxes are that bad here. Then again, I'm foreign. I pay higher taxes. You come here you pay lower taxes," said Wolfe.
Wolfe wants to be sure when the city hires workers, they spend his money wisely. "As long as their pay was considered a fair salary.... that's okay," said Wolfe.
Balancing the budget and keeping people working in hard times is not easy. Fortunately, the River City is staying afloat without laying people off, cutting pay or forcing furloughs. The city has left vacant positions empty and has frozen the salaries of most executives.
However, not all city workers are chugging along, making last year's salary.
Some workers have received large pay increases with no promotion.
The largest raise, by percentage, went to Tom Francis. He's the Public Information Officer for the Jacksonville Fire & Rescue Department.
He works as a liaison for the department and the media.
His salary for FY2008 was $53,197.58.
His salary for FY2009 is $75,000.00
That's a 40.98% raise with no promotion.
JFRD Director and Fire Chief Dan Kleman believed Francis was underpaid so he recommended the pay increase.
"In large part because of equity issues with other information officers and personnel in the city. Particulary personnel in the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and others involved in public information activities at City Hall."
City insiders studied workers in other city departments with similar responsibilities. They determined Francis deserved more money because the other workers earned more money.
"It's a little more complex than that," said City of Jacksonville Chief of Human Resources Chad Poppell.
Poppell says pay inequities can cause big problems if employees think they're being shorted.
"They've got a certain set of qualifications and they're performing well. Then you've got someone who's been here longer, same job, maybe same qualifications and they're performing just as well. That can kill morale. It can also cause problems if some type of discriminatory reason can be tied to it," said Poppell.
"Given the work load, given the 24-7 nature of the position and comparabilities, I think it is roughly fair that there would have been some type of adjustment," said Kleman.
Kleman told First Coast News that he understands that some taxpayers who may not be afforded the same review and pay adjustment might not be happy with paying for someone else's raise.
Through that same process, five city customer service employees received 21.63% raises to $26,977.56 annually. According to Misty Skipper, a spokesperson for Mayor Peyton, a study found those employees were underpaid.
An Administrative Aide in the Central Operations Department received a 25.02% raise to $35,316.00 annually through the same type of review.
The person who received the largest pay increase is the City Council's Secretary/Director Cheryl Brown.
Her FY2008 salary was $114,999.96
Her FY2009 salary is $144,279.00
That's a 25.46% raise.
"It was very merited at that time for this lady," said Jacksonville City Council President Ronnie Fussell.
He supported the raise. Fussell says Cheryl Brown was added the duties of the Council Director position to her existing Council Secretary role eight years ago. He says her job is a hybrid of several positions.
"In 2001, when the council merged the Council Director and Council Secretary positions, they did not do an audit at that time, for that position to find what that proper range should be," said Fussell.
And as they did for Francis and others... the city studied her responsibilities and her counterparts' responsibilities and determined her salary was far below the range of comparable employees.
She has also taken on other roles over the past eight years.
Brown's salary was boosted $29,279.04.
"We brought her in and changed her salary to below the 50 percentile," said Fussell.
"Because of her experience and rolling some of these other jobs into it, she merited a little more up in that scale," Fussell added.
To put those figures into perspective - Brown's raise was almost double the combined raises of the 41 employees of the Housing & Neighborhoods Department.
While some employees are getting large raises, others are not.
More than 80% of city workers are union members. Their salaries and raises are determined through collective bargaining and are still being determined.
The City Council included a 2% increase for non-union city workers for FY2009 which began October 1, 2008. According to Fussell and Poppell, that raise has not yet been implemented. However, they believe it will be retroactive if it is implemented.
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