City council approves an Executive Level pay raise for City of Lawton employees

LAWTON, Okla. (KSWO) - Pay raises are on the way for all Executive Level employees for the City of Lawton. This comes after Lawton City Council passed it during their last meeting on September 12.

After going through all of the salary increases posted by the City of Lawton, these pay increases will cost the city at least $155,000 a year.

Each non-contracted listed position received either a 5% or 10% raise.

Originally planned to be implemented in July, council formed the Employment Matters Committee and did a study between six peer cities like Norman and Enid, comparing the minimum, maximum and average salaries for the same position.

During the last city council meeting, Councilman Allan Hampton, the chairman of the Employment Matters Committee, explained the reason it was passed by the committee.

“The pay increases that we’re going to handout which would be retroactive to July were going to put us in line and in competition with the rest of the cities in Oklahoma as we look to fill positions, and move forward in being fair to the upper administration of our staff,” said Hampton.

According to council documents, the Mayor and council members expressed “concern that the salaries of City of Lawton employees are substantially lagging other cities or towns within Oklahoma of comparable size, population and city employees”.

Resolution for Executive employee raise.(KSWO)

Those documents also said the raises are to attract more employees and retain the ones the city already has. It’s inline with the general employee pay raises that happened earlier this year.