House Strategies Group built this site from the public record: the City's adopted salary schedule, its three labor agreements, its budget, and the published pay plans of the Central Valley cities Atwater hires against. It shows how we would run the study, using Atwater's own figures.
The RFP covers every classification, from Recreation Leader to City Manager, and asks for the whole package: base pay against the market, benefits and their cost, internal equity, recruitment and retention, and what each recommendation costs to put in place. Five facts from the record shape how we would run it.
The side letters with AFSCME Local 2703 that Council ratified on June 8, 2026 commit the City to a total compensation study using up to twelve comparator cities, with meet and confer on the results. All three MOUs (Atwater Police Officers Association; the Miscellaneous and Mid-Management units) end on June 30, 2027. A final report in late April gives both sides the same market and cost data before the next round opens, so every number we deliver carries one source and one date.
Every regular class on A-27 has six steps about 5% apart, a 27.6% range spread. That makes the plan simple to run and easy to compare. It also means range width is the same for every job family, which is one of the first questions scope item D raises. See every range.
The FY 2026-27 budget lists CAL FIRE battalion chiefs, and A-27 carries reserve firefighter lines with no career firefighter series. The study's public safety market work centers on the police ladder (Recruit through Chief), dispatch and records, with fire limited to the classes the City employs directly.
The 2026-2030 Strategic Plan asks staff to evaluate employee health plans for savings while keeping quality coverage (strategy 1.10), to survey employees every year (4.2), and to prepare succession plans (4.5). The total compensation section of this study feeds the first; the optional employee survey can be the first annual one.
In February 2026 staff proposed equal ranges for department heads. On A-27 as adopted in June, Finance and Human Resources Director ranges still sit $1,270 and $1,929 a month below Community Development at the top step. Scope item F asks the study to look at exactly these relationships. See the ladders.
Merced and Livingston are each under ten miles away; Turlock, Los Banos, Chowchilla, Ceres and others are within about forty. Several contract police or fire to a county or CAL FIRE, which changes who counts as a comparator for each class. See the peer chart.
Every figure on this site comes from a cited public document with its effective date: the City's Salary Schedule A-27, its MOUs, its adopted budgets, and each peer agency's own adopted schedule. The delivered study keeps that rule for every number in the final report.
A Certified Job Evaluator with thirty years of federal service, who has classified positions for public organizations of up to 2,000 employees, leads the class review. A benefits director for an 8,000-plus workforce leads the total compensation survey. Our project manager owns the schedule and presents to Council.
Excel workbooks with formulas intact, a maintenance guide, and a market file HR can update between studies. Our platform, Plumbline, assembles market data and tracks every source. People make every determination.
Each major recommendation states its basis (market, internal equity, recruitment and retention, or fiscal), its annual cost and its implementation options, as scope item L requires.
Nothing here uses non-public City data. Pay figures come from the City's posted salary schedule and labor agreements and from peer agencies' adopted schedules, each cited where it appears. Where a page shows a method on made-up data (the simulator on the Equity & Placement page), it says so. Market comparisons here use published range maximums only; the study itself matches classes by duties, adds benefits, and confirms the comparator list with the City.