VALLEY GRANDE — Valley Grande is making ongoing attempts to ensure its employees are fairly compensated.

The Valley Grande Council approved Monday a balanced fiscal year 2015 budget with a total of $600,250 in expected expenditures and $659,900 in expected income. Of those expenses planned for 2015, $8,000 stem from retirement expenses, which translates into a 3 percent increase for city employees retirement.

“We’re planning on doing some investigation with city’s our size to make sure that our people are properly compensated for what they do,” Labbe said.

In the 2014 fiscal year budget, the council paid for a 5 percent increase toward retirement and budgeted in $5,463 to fund the cost of adding city clerk Janet Frasier and assistant city clerk Kim Harris to the State of Alabama’s retirement plan.

“That’s one reason we did the retirement, because the city has to pick up a portion of that,” Labbe said. “Right now, we’re paying about 9 percent to catch our employees up to where they need to be.”

The council plans to conduct the investigation in the next two or three months.

The 3 percent increase already approved equals the cost of living, Labbe said.

“I felt like that was good step forward last year,” Labbe said. “We just need a chance to address the pay scale for this to make sure that we are as a city, right where we need to be with our employees.”