Our grievance was denied..............she is unfairly comparing our position to the same position from other departments, which she said she wouldn't do. She said in our meeting that we had in February that she would compare "job descriptions" not just titles. Our position is a hybrid position because we do patrol work, Sergeant work, and Lieutenant work, so we should also be compared to Lieutenants if their job description fits our position better. She further isn't comparing us to any of the metro departments except for one.......................which happens to be the lowest paid department in the metro area. I'm in the process of typing up our response and I'm planning on gathering information from all the metro departments in reference to their pay. We shouldn't be compared to departments outside the metro area because our cost of living is higher here and we aren't losing officers to small cities in southeast Iowa. We have lost them in the past to other departments in the metro area i.e. Des Moines, West Des Moines, Clive, etc. She doesn't want to compare us to those departments and tries to use population of the city as her reasoning behind this. While it's fair to compare population numbers, it isn't fair to compare those numbers to cities that aren't connected to the metro area. I would consider us the "outlier" in the State of Iowa because no other population center is as large as us in the entire State. She used two cities that are connected to Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, but the Des Moines Metro Area is 2 and 3 times the size of those areas.
It is my opinion that she is comparing us to those cities because it is advantageous to her to do so to make her argument fit. Statistics can say whatever you want if you skew the way you are comparing them.
