Cookeville Have Tentative April Deadline For Salary Study Results

Cookeville City Council approved to next step forward to conduct another salary study for city employees.

Human Resources Director Carl Sells said the city received three proposals for the work. He said they based their recommendation on how each proposal met a list of seven criteria.

“Cost is important but cost alone should never be the sole determining factor in a project such as this,” Sells said. “So we rated the experience of the entities, we determined how much experience they had with cities our size.”

The city had originally budgeted some $40,000 to conduct the study. Sells recommended Burris, Thompson, and Associates with a contract under budget at some $28,940. The current timeline for the work will have the results to the city in April.

City Manager James Mills said while this year’s historic salary raises for city employees was a good step, there is more to be done.

”We took great strides with our city employee salaries this past year,” Mills said. “But we feel like we can continue to make improvements. This study will be one of the key steps to that.”