Spanish Fork will implement a $40,000 study that will likely have little effect on the city.

The council unanimously voted to approve the study on Nov. 7, which means that the city will implement the performance-based pay system the Hay consulting firm designed for Spanish Fork. It also means the 17.9 percent retirement benefit that city employees receive -- and the mayor and some councilmen campaigned on changing -- could stay the same.

Assistant City Manager Seth Perrins said that Spanish Fork already has a performance-based pay system, but that system can sometimes be too relaxed. The Hay system requires managers to be more strict.

"The supervisors are committed to being accurate and specific in their evaluations and making the tough decision of saying this employee is doing well and this employee is not doing well and therefore I will distinguish in their pay," Perrins said, noting that part of the study included training on the new raise system.

As for the benefits, which was half of the study, the Hay group did not get the private sector data the council wanted. Instead, Perrins said that the city found the data another way, through the city's own insurance company. Without using names of businesses, the city can get the private sector data in the Spanish Fork area.

"It would just be plugging the data into the other study, this is a very easy and reliable source," Perrins said. This would fulfill some councilmen and the mayor's request for private sector data.

Before, the study compared Spanish Fork's benefits to other cities in the area, and those within 15,000 of the city's population. It found that the city had slightly higher benefits than other cities. The city's wages averaged to be in the 65 percentile, right where Spanish Fork's council wants to be.

Mayor Joe Thomas said that this was important to him because he wants balance between city employees and the people who pay them.

"The data is valuable, it wasn't quite what I hoped, I wanted to see more private sector data," he said. "I feel that the lines between private and public are fading."

He had hoped to cut the retirement benefit a few percentage points, possibly to match the required state percentage of 11.6 percent.

Councilman Seth Sorensen said that while the retirement benefits are high, the health insurance is "not the greatest" so the benefits balance each other out. He hopes everyone is now looking at employee compensation through similar eyes.

"I think it was very worthwhile," he said. "I was initially opposed to the idea, thinking we had collected the data over and over again."

Spanish Fork does a similar study every year, but this was the first time they paid to have an outside company do it, the purpose being to avoid bias.

The Hay study recommended no changes in benefits, and with the acceptance of the study, there won't be any.

If new data is incorporated and a new study is implemented with private data from the city's insurer, then it will have to be represented before the council through the public hearing process for acceptance. Thomas hopes that can happen before the city's budget begins being set for the next fiscal year.

Natalie Andrews is available at 344-2561 or nandrews@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.