Bloomington is changing some salaries and positions for the Police, Housing and Neighborhood Development and other departments.
The City Council passed two ordinances 8-0 on Wednesday which amend legislation passed last October setting the 2025 salaries for firefighters, police officers and other city employees. Councilmember Sydney Zulich was not present.
The city classifies its jobs based on grade. Each grade has a different starting salary and receives different pay raises after set amounts of time in the position.
One of the ordinances passed Wednesday allows one firefighter who went through the prerequisites to be hired in December but did not begin work until January to receive a $5,000 hiring bonus offered to new hires in 2024.
BPD will create a new Accreditation and Quality Assurance Specialist/Telecommunicator position, which will work in dispatch, and eliminate the Director of Civil Operations to “restructure their operations for optimal efficiency,” according to a memo to City Councilmembers. The current Director of Civil Operations will take another position in the department, Bloomington Human Resources Director Sharr Pechac said at the meeting, and another employee will take the new position.
The department will also upgrade the salary grade of the Front Desk Clerk, Records Supervisor and Records Assistant Supervisor positions. Each position’s description was previously updated because of additional work people in the job were taking on. The pay increase is to reflect that new description.
The HAND Department will add a new, higher grade Operations Manager position to replace one of its Program Managers. According to Pechac, HAND Director Anna Killion-Hanson believes the new role will oversee public events and manage additional staff.
The Council Office’s Assistant Administrator/Research Assistant will also get a pay raise to increase its competitiveness and staff retention, according to a memo to the council from Pechac and Compensation and Benefits Director Erica De Santis. Pechac said the assistant position has taken on revised responsibilities that warrant the grade increase, as well.
The Utilities Department will eliminate a Transmission and Distribution Meter Technician and the Engineering Field Tech K9 Unit, two positions Pechac said have not been filled for some time. The meter technician is no longer needed due to upgrades in technology, the memo stated, and the field tech position was never filled and is not wanted by Mayor Kerry Thomson’s administration.
“I just want to briefly say that I’m disappointed that we’re not going to have sewage sniffing dogs, which were proposed two years ago, since that Engineering Field Tech K9 Unit is now no longer going to have a staff member and is not going to exist anymore,” councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith said, smiling.
She said otherwise, she supported the ordinance and was pleased with Pechac’s work on it.
All the changes are covered by the respective departments’ existing personnel budget, according to the memos to the council, meaning they won’t require additional funding or budget changes.
