A Tale of Two Cities, Grants Pass Voted Down Large Pay Raises, Ashland Didn’t

Both Ashland and Grants Pass this year commissioned a Tennessee consulting firm to assess pay scales for top city employees. The outfit, McGrath Human Resources Group, recommended that both Rogue Valley cities make big time adjustments in pay.

Under the McGrath plan, the city manager and eight other top officials in Grants Pass would get raises between $13,004 for the fire chief to $43,554 for the information technology director.  The manager would see his pay go from $194.956 to $223,817. But it was not to be.

Last week, the Grants Pass Council voted down these increases by a vote of 5 to 2. Instead these officials, along with other city employees,  will get a three percent cost of living pay boost.

It was a different story in Ashland where Mayor Tonya Graham broke a 3-3 Council tie to institute similar major pay increases. City Manager Sabrina Cotta’s pay went up to nearly $217,000 and other department heads received raises of between $3,000 and $30,000 a year

One major difference in the two cities – many Grants Pass citizens strongly protested the increases and the council appointed a task force of business leaders and current and former Citizens Budget Committee members to review McGrath’s recommendations, while Ashlanders quietly went along.

A contributing factor may well have been that Grants Pass still has a daily newspaper that closely follows city and county governments, while Ashland is without a newspaper and media outlets, outside The Chronicle, either largely  ignored or misrepresented the proposed pay increases.

Reprinted with permission from Ashland Chronicle.