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Snowmass Village Town Council approves merit raises for 2013

Jill Beathard
Snowmass Sun

The Snowmass Village Town Council approved some changes to the town’s budget on May 20, including adding a merit pool payroll increase for the second half of 2013.

The merit pool would be 2.5 percent for the year, meaning top performers on town staff can receive as much as a 5 percent increase.

Town Manager Russ Forrest explained that the goal of the payroll increase was to start catching up with salary increases that other municipalities have given recently. Snowmass Village gave raises in 2008 and then not again until 2011, said Finance Director Marianne Rakowski. In 2012, town employees received a bonus but no raise.



Councilwoman Markey Butler wanted to know how positions at Snowmass Village compared to their equivalents locally and in other resort towns. She requested some data before the 2014 budget process begins this fall.

Expenditures for completing the apron on the Highline Road roundabout, which will cost $69,690, and pedestrian-crossing improvements at Faraway and Brush Creek roads, at $167,550, were approved for the road fund. Public Works Director Hunt Walker explained that a mini-roundabout test that council had discussed for the Owl Creek and Brush Creek road intersection had been taken off the budget because he thought it was too expensive to be worth it. Testing how drivers responded to a temporary mini-roundabout in winter traffic problems would be the most important data, but the test would have been conducted in the summer, he and Forrest told the council.




Approved expenditures for the Ice Age Discovery Center from both the general fund and the marketing fund also were included on the financial update.

Other business

Town Attorney John Dresser told the council that Snowmass Acquisition Co. had dropped off a planned-unit-development amendment application on May 20 just before the council’s meeting. The application proposes changes to the PUD for building 13B, the second phase of the Viceroy Snowmass, in Base Village.