St. Clairsville Service Director Scott Harvey voices his frustration due to “lack of action” by St. Clairsville City Council.

St. Clairsville Councilwoman Kristi Lipscomb asks St. Clairsville Law Director Joe Vavra if paying someone in a new position at a higher rate that council didn’t approve violated the city charter. Councilwoman Terra Butler is seated to her left.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — St. Clairsville City Council held a special meeting Wednesday to discuss the possibility of creating a new position that would see the senior executive administrative assistant add human resources duties into its daily responsibilities.

The city doesn’t have an HR person, and both St. Clairsville City Council and Service Director Scott Harvey agree it would be a welcome addition for the city. Where council and Harvey differ is regarding how said employee should be compensated.

Councilman Don Vincenzo called for the special meeting in hopes of hashing out the disagreement.

“I guess one of our main concerns with the new HR position there is the salary, the $18,000 additional salary for that job,” he said. “The job was brought up by Scott, which is correct, but the salary is through council. But looking forward to the upcoming contracts coming in and in comparison to the other salaries we have here in the city, we just think the $18,000 is really high.”

He added that he agrees that the new position would require handling a substantial amount of additional work, but he doesn’t believe it would be $18,000 worth of additional work than the current job.

Vincenzo said he recently did extensive research into what other cities similar in size pay someone of an equivalent job description. He found that even in the case of cities that were somewhat larger than St. Clairsville, an additional $18,000 is too hefty of an increase to the salary.

Harvey disagreed, saying he believes it would be a reasonable amount.

He said, “$18,000 is what we would spend to fulfil our HR requirements for the Ohio Revised Code and our own goodwill. Where we want to be is we want to be protected, and our people are properly trained, and of course that they have a good work environment.”

He added that he personally doesn’t believe that $18,000 is too large of a sum for all of the additional work the senior executive administrative assistant would be providing.

“Myself, personally, I just feel like that’s a lot of money,” Vincenzo said.

Harvey replied that he had not had any direction from council on that matter, so he made his own determination. He said it’s ultimately council’s decision to determine what the salary would be.

“I can’t guarantee that position would be filled for what you guys have to propose. It may change the way things are currently set up,” he said.

He then asked council to propose an amount and said he would relay it to Elaina Moscato, who is currently the senior executive administrative assistant and will potentially become the person who will fill the new position.

Council member Kristi Lipscomb asked Harvey the status of the position and whether Moscato has already been moved to the new post. He replied that she has.

“What’s the status of the pay of that position? Did she get the raise for the new position even though we didn’t approve it?” Lipscomb asked.

Harvey responded that Mayor Kathryn Thalman signed a letter stating that Moscato could receive the additional $18,000. Lipscomb said Thalman didn’t have the authority to do that because council approves salaries for city workers.

Both Thalman and St. Clairsville Finance Director Annette Nichols were unable to attend the special meeting due to having a pre-existing scheduled meeting elsewhere.

Harvey said he made a note of Lipscomb’s question and will get to the bottom of it for her.

He added that he believes adding the $18,000 would be the most fiscally efficient path for the city to take while also covering all of its bases simultaneously.

Lipscomb asked St. Clairsville Law Director Joe Vavra if paying someone in a new position at a higher rate that council didn’t approve violated the council’s charter.

Vavra replied that he is going to take some of the blame for the situation because he spoke to Harvey after the last council meeting about creating the position as well as about the salary for the position.

“I recall the conversation was something along the lines of I asked if her salary was in the new budget and he answered yes. And I said well OK, if the council doesn’t want to pay that salary they can adjust it in the budget and kind of left it at that,” Vavra said. “What I should have said was OK, we can’t pay her that until it’s approved in the budget.”

Lipscomb told Vavra that something similar happened last year and said it was made clear to Nichols that she isn’t allowed to give any raises without council’s explicit instructions.

“I’m very angry because she knows better. I don’t want to say much more, but it’s almost a dereliction of her duties when she knows she shouldn’t do that and did it anyway,” Lipscomb said.

Harvey replied that he doesn’t have any say in that but suggested that whatever salary council decides for the new position, the current one can be adjusted. He said that he came up with the numbers due to a “lack of action,” a statement both Lipscomb and Councilwoman Terra Butler refuted.

“We had two executive sessions. We left the first executive session thinking that a job description was going to be developed and formed and posted, because that was the direction that council wanted to go,” Butler said.

“That’s not what I got from it, there was no direction on a pay rate,” Harvey responded. “You can’t post something without pay. We had no direction on how many hours a week, if it was going to be part time or full time, there were no definite details and you can’t post something unless you have the details to the position.”

Butler replied that after the first closed-door meeting, council was under the impression that the details were being worked on. But when members came back to the second meeting, all of the decisions had been made without council’s input.

Council President Jim Velas interjected that he is willing to play the role of negotiator between council and Harvey in coming up with an amount.

Butler said she would refuse to vote yes on anything more than a $50,000 annual salary, adding that she believes $48,000 is where she would feel more comfortable.

Councilman Mike Smith said he was willing to agree to $50,000, as did Vincenzo and Lipscomb. Council members Holly West and Lucien Murzyn both agreed that $50,000 was a fair compromise.

Council members did not say how much Moscato was being paid as senior executive administrative assistant, and they did not make it clear how much was being added to her salary to perform the additional HR duties and bring her to a total of $50,000 per year.

Following council’s agreement, Harvey said he will notify Moscato but depending on whether she is willing to accept those terms, they may be having to have the same conversation next meeting.