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WARREN -- City council approved salary increases for its clerk and deputy clerk of council at its meeting Wednesday.
Councilman Greg Greathouse, D-3rd Ward and chairman of the finance and income committee, said the clerk and deputy clerk will both see a 2% raise in January, another 2% increase in July 2024, and then a 3% increase in January 2025.
According to the legislation, the clerk, Brenda Smith, will see her salary rise to $53,559, $54,630 and then $56,269.
According to the ordinance, the deputy clerk, Mellisa Hughes, will see her salary increase to $45,525, $46,436, and then $47,829.
"The percentage is the same that policies and procedures (local for nonbargaining employees) got," Greathouse said.
Greathouse noted that similarly to other legislation council recently approved to increase the salaries of elected and appointed officials, the pay rate of the deputy clerk is connected to that of the clerk. Greathouse said with the new ordinance, the deputy clerk will now earn a higher percentage of the clerk's salary.
"Right now she's making 80 percent; we adjusted that to 85 percent going forward," Greathouse said.
The ordinance was unanimously adopted as an emergency. Greathouse said it needed to be approved before the end of 2023.
"The last raise they had goes away at the end of this year and there's no mechanism for a salary adjustment," Greathouse said. "We try to keep them in lockstep with the union and the policies and procedures. Policies and procedures aren't union, but it gets what the union gets traditionally. Then we pattern their raises right after policies and procedures."
All of council supported the legislation. Councilman Ron White, D-7th Ward, argued the raises put forth in the ordinance were not enough.
"I will vote for this here, but I do feel that it is too light of an increase," White said. "People call them all the time. They had to do their homework just like we have to do ours... There's only two of them in the office but we have 10 people on council. I'm looking at that like maybe they deserve a little bit more."
In other business, council approved an ordinance authorizing Mayor Doug Franklin and Safety / Service Director Eddie Colbert to transfer a single parcel of city-owned property to the Western Reserve Port Authority and vacate the right of way for the purpose of economic development.
The parcel is located at the site of the former Westlawn neighborhood, property formerly owned by Warren, and near the old Western Reserve High School, property previously owned by the Warren City School district.
Ground was broken at the site in August by developers for building No. 1 of the West Warren Industrial Park -- a large-scale multimillion-dollar development suitable for mid-sized modern manufacturing.
The ordinance adopted at Wednesday's council meeting regarded a parcel which was initially transferred by the school district to the port authority. Upon further examination, the parcel had actually belonged to and had to be transferred by the city.
"It was a misunderstanding of a parcel, whether it was on the Westlawn side or the Reserve side," Colbert said. "But it was caught, so tonight we just corrected it."