Merit Scores Released
Finally...
But let us not grumble about
how long it took to get a copy of the scores. Let us instead rejoice at
seeing a more even distribution of good scores spread between the high
and low paying grades. 
What
do you mean we can’t do that? Surely now that we have had three years
to work the kinks out of the system, our merit reviews fairly reward all
hard working, over achieving employees, regardless of their pay grade.
What? They don’t? Oops. My Bad.
Admittedly
there were a few stray numerical quirks, like employees who ‘Had
Potential’, but still got a 4% merit raise. Or the City Attorney’s
office not turning in their scores on about 70 employees. But even with
these little hiccups, it is sad to see that OVER ALL the merit scoring
was a virtual repeat of last year. Holy Statistics Batman!
This
year the lower grade employees did 3% better than last year, 57% vs 43%.
Not wonderful, but at least some improvement right? Sadly, no.
Most of that movement, 2.5% of it if you use last year’s scores, could
be attributed to those missing city attorney employees,. And of course
it must be pointed out, again, that it took 75% of the lower grade
employees to get that 57%. So once again, the higher graded 25% of
employees had more than double the amount of above average scores.
So
much for assurances to the City Council that the lower grades would be
fairly represented when it came to getting the good scores. Hello! Third
times a charm, anyone noticing a pattern here?
Interestingly,
before this data could be received by us, a tabulation was done for the
City Manager. Using their grouping it was difficult to tell where all
the low dollar grades fell, but it is crystal clear on our tab sheet.
More
interesting was the wide score spread between departments. Employees in
H.R.
(1.5%) and Streets (5.3%) had the lowest departmental percentage of
above average scores. (Ed. Note: Members
can request copies of all the scores.)
