07-02-2025
Some Portage employees get raises, others denied
The Portage City Council gave pay raises to some employees but denied others during a marathon meeting Tuesday.
Councilman Ferdinand Alvarez said it's unfortunate that pay raises have to be negotiated in public, just a couple of months after the budget was adopted. He was concerned about the timing, with the budget already tight and tightening further.
'We have $300K left to spend beyond what was budgeted for,' Councilman Collin Czilli said.
Some of the increases were in the budget but not reflected in the salary ordinance, Mayor Austin Bonta said.
Among them was the human resources director, who was hired at $75,000 and raised last year to $85,000 and given a raise to $95,000 on Tuesday, retroactive to Jan. 1.
The director leads a department with one part-time staffer in a department that should have 2.5 full-time equivalent staffing instead of 1.5, based on the 330 employees on the city's payroll, Bonta said.
The HR director has saved the city money on insurance premiums by establishing a safety committee, identified required federal forms that weren't filled out previously and made other important changes, Bonta said.
Democrats Alvarez, Czilli and Gina Giese-Hurst voted against the raise on a party-line vote.
The mayor's chief of staff was given a raise to $60,000 along the same party-line vote.
'She's my brain. She's the person who keeps everything running there today. She's the person that frees me up to do things as a mayor,' Bonta said. A comparable job overseeing the different departments elsewhere could command a salary over $100,000, he said.
The title for the team management/events coordinator was changed to public relations specialist and the pay for the position set at $55,000, with the same party-line vote.
With all she does — from raising money to pay for Fourth of July fireworks and other causes as well as organizing events and handling publicity for the city — her title should be changed to public relations specialist, council President Victoria Vasquez said. Bonta agreed.
Czilli, however, objected. 'We're talking about a person's title without talking with them, which is kind of concerning,' he said.
Also, there's no job description for this new position, Czilli said.
He objected to the long list of raises proposed Tuesday.
'We've got two clerks at the utilities and sanitation departments that are woefully underpaid compared to other clerks in the city, and we're not considering raises for them,' Czilli said.
Bonta said a wage study will address those issues. The employees for whom he proposed raises have earned them, based on his evaluation of their performance, he said.
Czilli said the city has no history of performance-based evaluations. 'It just seems to me that we're picking and choosing who gets raises at certain times,' he said.
'The salary study is going to show us how behind we are across the board,' he said.
The council voted unanimously to deny a raise for a payroll clerk hired late last year.
'She took a pay cut from Valparaiso of $2,000 to come to the city of Portage,' Clerk-treasurer Liz Modesto said. The woman was hired with the understanding that Modesto would seek a raise for her in 2025, Modesto said. 'This position is a very critical position in the clerk-treasurer's office,' she said.
The raise is paid for by the utility fees, not by the general fund, she noted.
Czilli said it's important to look not jasust at the salary but the full compensation package, and Portage's benefits are more generous than Valparaiso's.
The council voted unanimously to give a raise to an accounts receivable clerk being paid $6,000 less than someone else in the clerk-treasurer's doing the same work.
An accounts payable clerk got a $5,000 raise, paid for by the Redevelopment Commission, on a 4-3 vote. This time, the dissenters were Vasquez, Melissa Weidenbach and Robert Parnell.
The clerk is handling financials for the commission, with an employee in the planning department handling other duties formerly done by a single person who was paid $60,000 per year. The planning department employee got a $3,500 increase last year and $10,000 this year, but not the clerk, Modesto said.
The council approved a $65,000 city planner with $5,000 of it from the Redevelopment Commission. Czilli and Alvarez voted against it.
The council voted 6-1 to deny raises for police and fire administrative assistants who essentially serve as chiefs of staff for those departments. Weidenbach supported the raises.
'This process is just not making sense to me, one bit. We're just creating a bigger problem,' Czilli said, if the council had given them raises but not counterparts in other departments who are already paid less.
Bonta said the wage study will address these issues.
