Atlanta officials are going to try to find a way to give the city's roughly 7,500 employees an across-the-board pay increase, Mayor Kasim Reed said Friday at a lunch to celebrate the city's designation as an elite “Best and Brightest” employer by the National Association for Business Resources.
"If you give me a chance, I'm going to start showing you all the money," Reed said. "I'm pretty good at finding money." Reed said the city's $542 million budget for next year, which received City Council approval on June 18, includes no layoffs or furloughs for city employees. "I do get that you all carry the city," the first-term mayor told hundreds of employees at City Hall.
It is unclear how the city would pay for raises across the board. The budget aimed to get employee compensation up to at least 80 percent of the comparable pay elsewhere. But only about a fifth of the city's workforce will see their pay increase under that plan. Reed said previously that the city would not have been able to afford organization-wide raises in the 2013 budget.
Sonji Jacobs, a spokeswoman for Reed, later told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Reed's comments on Friday reflected his appreciation for employees' service. "The raise is certainly a goal for the future when the city can afford it," she said.
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