In the past, and pursuant to requirements of Article III, Section 11 of the Charter and Section 15-2 of the Code of Ordinances, Council has adopted, by ordinance, the pay plan for City officers and employees.  This plan establishes the pay range for all City job classifications.  While Council reserves the right to amend this ordinance, the ordinance directs the City Manager to fix salaries within these ranges.  Without formal Council approval the City Manager does not have authority to pay someone outside the established pay range. 

Council set the pay plan for 2022 through Ordinance No. 16-2021 in October, when the budget was passed. Inflation figures have become available which indicate that the state minimum wage will increase in 2022 to $12.56 per hour, which is above the pay plan for non-regular part-time positions of $12.32 set in Ordinance No. 16-2021.

The state minimum wage was addressed by two ballot measures, the first in 2006, which tied changes in the state minimum wage to inflation, and the second Amendment 70, approved as a constitutional amendment in 2016, which raised the minimum wage from $8.31 to $9.30 per hour in 2017 and then increased it 90 cents each year until the wage reached $12.00 in 2020. After 2020, changes in the minimum wage revert to tracking inflation, as per the 2006 law. The bureau of labor statistics determined the rate of inflation in Colorado from the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2021 to be 1.9%, and the minimum wage is therefore increasing by 1.9% effective January 1, 2022 to $12.56 per hour. The 1.9% increase in the minimum wage is an additional  increase for the pay plan of non-regular part-time positions in the 2022 pay plan approved in Ordinance 16-2021.  The increase only affects those specific positions and does NOT change any other positions in the pay plan.

This also corrects an oversight in leaving out the Police Apprentice position (Pay grade G) from the previous Pay Plan Ordinance for 2022. Council approved this position in 2021 but it inadvertently got left out of the pay plan.