City manager addresses employee-compensation complaints

The City of Asheville says it’s taking steps to address potential pay inequities, after a group of Black women employees raised concerns over hiring and compensation practices more than a year ago. The women have not been publicly identified. 

“I want to lift those women up in this conversation,” said Council member Antanette Mosley during the Sept. 10 Asheville City Council meeting. “I would say the impetus for this organizational-wide change really is placed at their feet. All these great things that are coming, I think we should credit those folks for being brave enough to come forward.”

Xpress reached out to the city for more information about the complaints but did not receive a response before press time.

During the meeting, City Manager Debra Campbell gave a presentation that aimed to follow up on a report that was first presented to Council during the Feb. 23 City Council retreat. The report found that Asheville’s human resources department faced “significant challenges” due to “leadership and staff turnover, a lack of defined policies and procedures for core HR functions.” 

The city’s HR department manages hiring and compensation practices for the city’s roughly 1,200 employees. In September 2023, the city paid $74,000 to local government consulting company Raftelis to conduct the report and offer recommendations to the city’s HR department after complaints from several city employees. 

The consulting group interviewed 17 city stakeholders within the city, who reported that the lack of structure has led to “inconsistently administered processes,” leading to concerns about “equitable and fair hiring and compensation decisions in the absence of formally documented practices.”

The report did not tie the potential pay inequities to race or gender because the city does not track demographic data, as revealed by the Cease the Harm audit, released in March. The audit, conducted by Carter Development Group, sought to assist the joint city-county Community Reparations Commission.

Instability in HR leadership roles and department turnover were also identified as key issues by Raftelis. According to the report, eight of the 17 current department staff members have been in their roles for two years or fewer. During the Sept. 10 Council meeting, Mayra Cummings, HR organizational learning and development specialist noted that two more employees had left since the study was conducted.

The report also notes that from 2017- 21, the HR director position was filled by multiple people who served in an interim capacity until the appointment of Shannon Barrett in 2021. Barrett resigned on March 8 and the city announced in an Aug. 21 press release that it had hired Emily Provance to serve as director. Provance will begin work Sept. 16.

City Manager Campbell and Cummings said during the meeting that they planned to implement many of the recommendations from the Raftelis report and that some of the recommendations were currently in progress, including developing processes for HR that would “support equity, fairness, and transparency with the hiring process,” among other changes. The HR department will also develop methods for monitoring employee demographics as they relate to hiring, promotions and compensation changes.

Despite the report’s release in February, some members of Council said during the Sept. 10 meeting that they missed the report altogether and raised transparency issues. 

“As a Council member, I too have been aware of the staff complaints around pay equity, especially coming from Black women,” Council member Kim Roney said during the meeting. “I’m embarrassed I missed the release of this Raftelis report that came out in February, and then had difficulty finding it when it was brought to my attention this summer.

“I imagine that a lack of timely, formal review, public process and a meaningful response must be so discouraging [to city employees],” Roney continued. “Apologies must be met with behavior changes.”

This is a developing story.