The Iowa City Conference Board passed the City Assessor’s fiscal-year 2013 budget proposal during one of its two yearly meetings Tuesday night.

The conference board — consisting of Iowa City city councilors, Johnson County supervisors, and Iowa City School Board members — voted to eliminate a proposed $3,525 longevity expenditure before passing the budget. Longevity pay was previously allotted $3,350 for fiscal-year 2012.

City Assessor Dennis Baldridge said the conference board eliminated step/merit pay for fiscal 2012 because they want to spend more time evaluating how the pay options would effect citizens. The proposed step/merit expenditures for fiscal 2013 is $6,000.

Baldridge suggested the conference board leave both longevity and merit/salary pay in the budget for this meeting and vote at the next meeting.

But conference board members insisted on proceeding with only step/merit pay.

"We’re either doing longevity or merit," Supervisor Janelle Rettig said. "I think [Baldridge] wanted to move to merit last year, but we didn’t have a clear direction from the conference board to do that."

All conference members approved the budget proposal with the elimination of the longevity pay.

The assessor’s budget will be effective July 1.

A public hearing for the assessor’s budget will be held March 6 at 3 p.m.

—by Kristen East