If you work for the city of North Myrtle Beach you could soon see fatter paychecks. The city manager unveiled a plan Tuesday during day two of the city’s budget retreat that would increase all full-time employee salaries by four percent.

“We thought it was the right thing to do,” City Manager Mike Mahaney said. He told council his city staff does more with less, and they need to be compensated for it. 

“Most of our people are cross-trained, you know in public safety our policemen are firemen; our firemen are policemen,” Mahaney told News13 after the meeting.

But he said that his plan is not to add more people because of that. Rather, the proposal calls to pay current staff more to both boost employee morale and also keep the city competitive with cities like Myrtle Beach and Conway.

The pay increase would affect all full-time staff and not just public safety, unlike Myrtle Beach’s new plan, which only addresses the police department.

“We work as a team, we work very closely, and we just felt that it needed to involve more than just police and fire,” Mahaney said.

Mayor Marilyn Hatley echoed those sentiments, agreeing that the city is “lean and mean.” She said in her 16 years as mayor of North Myrtle Beach she cannot recall a time where they did something like this across the board.  

Using numbers provided by the city, right now 30 firefighters make $36,975. We did the math, and a four percent increase on that is $38,454.

A certified police officer making $41,096 could see their salary jump to $42,739.

Hatley said city employees wear many hats. “The more work you put on your employees, the more that they should be paid if they’re doing their job well.”

The city manager noted in his presentation that many positions suffer from pay compression. That’s when you have small differences in pay regardless of skill. 

“What will happen over time, because it has been compressed, is supervisors will begin to separate from rank and file,” he said. “It’s not immediate, and it’s kind of like compound interest. It’s gonna take a few years.”

 

The plan does not call to hire more staff right now, but Mahaney said that is not to say they cannot come back next year and request more. During day one of the city’s budget retreat, council discussed raising property taxes by two mills. The cost of these salary increases would be included under that.