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Informational Material for 12-4-84 City Council Meeting Page 4 This State law may be "a bureaucratic heaven" to some, but the fact of the matter is that we as a City cannot ignore a State law. This situation is not unusual where the State or Federal government mandates a program to be implemented by a City, but, does not supply funds for implementing such a program. This is a fact of life and something that we cannot get around. The MAMA proposal is the best that I have seen offered and I feel it will be the best solution to achieving an equitable comparable worth program in Lake Elmo. It will be a professional and objective study that will be personali.lzed to the needs of Lake Elmo. This study would keep the City's pay structure in line with the neighboring cities. As you may recall, there are over 56 cities already participating in this program and others may join. I don't think that all 56 cities can be completely wrong about joining in such a study. Most agencies that have to implement a comparable worth program are hiring consultants to do their studies. This includes Washington County, the State of Minnesota and school districts in the area. Like agencies often combine their efforts to achieve aheconomy of scale in complying with these types of State laws. We can follow the State guidelines for comparable worth when they are completed; but, the State positions do not adequately relate to City positions especially for a city the size of Lake Elmo. This is the largest benefit of joining the MAMA study in that our generalist type workers can get evaluated by the task that they complete. We do not have the luxury of having a worker specialize in park duties or snow plowing duties or street repair duites or typing duties or filing duties. We have employees that are generalists and can do a wide range of activites. The method of determining the relative worth of one employee or task to the City versus a completely different employee or task is the key element in thelaw and the major problem for doing a comparable worth study in-house without professional, objective consultation. If need be, we can do a comparable worth study in-house, but this will open us up to criticism from the employees affected and the public. The question would be "who does the comparable worth study and who sets up the standards". Would the City Council do the comparable worth study or would the Council authorize me to do such a study? No matter who in-house would do the study it could be perceived as being a subjective interpretation of what is being accomplished by the workers in the City. The idea of hiring consultants to do this comparable worth study is to obtain objectivity in determining what each employees tasks are worth to the City. If it is not possible to go with the recommended MAMA program, then we will obviously do the best we can in-house. I am not sure when a final decision is going to be required by the MAMA organization to determine who all is going to be included in the study, but, I will be attending the 12-4-84 MAMA meeting and keep you informed as developments take place. 12. Attached for your information is some correspondence received from Washington County and the Minnesota Department of Transportation relating to the speed zones on CSAH 17 . The City had requested that a study be done to determine if some of these zones need to be reduced in certain areas. As the letter indicates a study was completed and