Natchez pay rise for public employees
Natchez board moves toward 3% pay raises for firefighters, public works staff
The Natchez Board of Aldermen took up plans for roughly 3% across-the-board pay raises for firefighters and public works employees at its Sept. 23 meeting before closing the session to discuss individual salary matters.
Mayor Dan Gibson told the board, "I think it is understood that we are going to be giving a 3% or thereabouts across the board to firefighters public works but we have a few individual employees whose job performance uh relating to salary uh suggestions have to be discussed." The raises are already built into the adopted city budget. Following the mayor's report, the board voted to enter executive session under the personnel exception to the Mississippi Open Meetings Act to take up the individual cases tied to job performance.
Most of the detail on those individual adjustments was reserved for the closed portion of the meeting and was not discussed publicly.
Public payroll growth remains a routine point of scrutiny for taxpayers, and a broad raise for firefighters and public works staff, already accounted for in the city's adopted budget, is the kind of action that belongs in the public record even when related personnel discussions occur behind closed doors.