The top executive for Pulaski County's transit agency won a second raise in six months Tuesday after the agency board conducted a compensation review and found his salary wanting compared with his peers.
The Rock Region Metro board of directors, with eight of its 12 members participating, voted to grant the agency's executive director, Jarod Varner, a 3 percent raise that will boost his annual salary to $135,061. The board also voted to add $5,000 to his deferred compensation account. There were no votes against the raise.
Exactly six months earlier, on Jan. 19, the board voted to grant Varner a 3 percent pay increase that took his annual salary to $131,127. He also received a bonus equal to 3 percent of his salary at that time.
Varner, 35, was hired to head the agency three years ago with a $120,000 starting salary. He previously was vice president of operations for the Denton County Transportation Authority in Lewisville, Texas. Varner replaced Betty Wineland, who retired after 25 years at the agency formerly known as Central Arkansas Transit.
Tuesday's vote came after the board voted to go into executive session to discuss its compensation review. The eight members met privately for less than an hour before voting to give Varner a raise.
The board months ago "agreed there was a need to look at his compensation because we simply didn't know if we were within the margins of similar agencies or not," said Bentley Wallace, who is a board member from North Little Rock and serves as its personnel committee chairman.
The board obtained budgets, chief executive compensation and other information on 18 transit agencies of similar size from the American Public Transportation Association and found that Varner's salary was below the average.
"We feel like his performance is well above average," Wallace said. "We wanted to at least get him incrementally to the average. I think we're getting closer to that by this step."
The raise comes during an agency initiative to modify more than half of its 26 regular bus routes, changes that likely will begin this fall.
Varner described the proposed route tweaks as "micro-changes" that the agency could fit within its existing budget and produce a more efficient system that may help attract more riders.
The first of five public meetings to discuss the proposed changes was held Tuesday night. A second is scheduled to be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. today in Room 216 of the Laman Library at 2801 Orange St. in North Little Rock. Three more are scheduled to be held next week in Maumelle, Sherwood and Little Rock.
The proposed changes came after voters on March 1 rejected a quarter-percentage-point increase in the countywide sales tax that supporters said would shore up the transit system.
It was to be the county's first tax solely dedicated to transit and was projected to raise $18 million annually. Rock Region had planned to use the proceeds to expand regular bus service, increase the frequency of stops on its busiest routes, tailor other routes to better serve riders, and establish some routes using larger buses on traffic lanes reserved for them.
The proposal was a product of a strategic plan the agency developed under Varner that also resulted in a new name for the agency. Varner also led an effort that saw the agency's first compressed natural gas buses go into service, developed a real-time passenger information system and made free Wi-Fi available on buses.
Metro on 07/20/2016