City of St. Louis Adjusts Timeline for Employee Compensation Plan

The City of St. Louis is adjusting the implementation date for its new employee compensation and classification plan to allow for a thorough final review and to account for recent public safety developments, City officials announced today.

While the City previously targeted February 2026 for the enactment of the new pay structure, the revised timeline ensures the plan is accurate and sustainable for both the workforce and taxpayers. The City has announced the intention to implement the plan by March.

A significant factor in this adjustment is the recent announcement regarding pay increases for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, which would also add to pension costs for the City in ways that have not been accounted for. Under City Charter requirements, raises for police officers trigger automatic matching raises and increased pension costs for City of St. Louis firefighters to maintain pay parity. This was not accounted for by the Board of Police Commissioners either. The Department of Personnel is currently recalibrating the citywide budget and the Unified Pay Structure to integrate these mandatory public safety adjustments.

“Our priority is getting this right the first time,” said Personnel Director Brian Light. “With the addition of the police and fire pay triggers, we must ensure our $10 million annual budget allocation is distributed fairly while maintaining the integrity of our new 30-grade pay system. We owe our employees a system that is consistent and reliable, and that requires careful coordination before implementation.”

City officials also cited continued negotiations with union partners and the need for rigorous testing to integrate the new open-range structure into existing payroll systems as additional reasons for the extension.

Despite the adjusted timeline, the City remains committed to the core pillars of the compensation study:

Closing the Market Gap: Addressing the 30% lag in pay range minimums identified by Evergreen Solutions LLC by:

1. Improving pay range minimums and securing across-the-board raises as the first action the City plans to take in the coming years to become more competitive, with additional recommendations from the study, including a realignment of the full pay range and adopting new and market-responsive compensation structures.
2. Maintaining Competitive Benefits: Ensuring employees continue to enjoy top-tier retirement benefits, including a 17.35% City contribution.

“As we work to improve salaries for all City employees, I want us to move with urgency and be deliberate,” Mayor Cara Spencer said. “The Personnel Department has been doing exactly that, but we are now forced to take the time to account for our police and fire obligations that were made by the Board of Police Commissioners without concern for the overall City budget or other city staff. Nevertheless, we are building a solid foundation that benefits every city employee, including police and firefighters, and every taxpayer in the long term.”

The City will continue to provide updates as recommendations for the approximately 4,200 impacted employees to the Civil Service Commission and the Board of Aldermen.