The city’s public works and utility workers and secretaries in city offices will benefit most under a revised pay plan proposed Monday by Mayor George Flaggs Jr.

Under the new proposal, the raises are on a sliding scale from 3.5 to 2.5 percent based in an employee’s rate of pay, with employees on the low end of the city’s pay scale — $8.26 to $8.50 an hour, or up to $17,680 per year — getting a 3.5 percent increase, and division heads, who are at the top of the pay scale — $35, 006 or more, getting a 2.5 percent raise.

According to the first proposal, division heads would have received a 3 percent raise and other workers 2 percent.

Flaggs said the pay scales he recommended in his first proposal for the police and fire departments, and the raises for Fire Chief Charles Atkins and deputy fire chiefs Craig Danczyk and Kenneth Daniels and the department’s training officer, will remain in place.

Atkins will receive a $10,000 raise, with Danczyk and Daniels each receiving $3,500. The training officer will get a $2,792 raise. Flaggs said they are the only administrators receiving a specific dollar raise. He will fund the raises with $400,000 in surplus funds never put in the city’s reserve fund plus an additional $25,000 “cushion” from the $351,000 fiscal 2015 surplus for the first year.

Flaggs said he based the new plan plan on the number of city employees making less than $35,000 a year, adding, there were more city employees “ making less than $35,000 than made $35,000 and up, so we reversed and gave them the biggest percentage of raise.”

“The bulk of the raise, the higher percent of the raise, goes to the public works people,” he said. “These are the infrastructure people. They’re the ones who take the heat. They’re out there daily working on the water lines, the gas lines. Rain, sun, sleet or snow, they’re the ones who have to go. These are the people who keep the city rolling. These are the people when the crisis comes, they’re on the ground.”

The rest of the proposed raises, based on pay, includes:

• $8.51 and hour to $10 an hour, 3.25 percent.

• $10.01 to $12 an hour, 3 percent.

• $12.01 to $16.83 an hour, 2.75 percent.

• More than $16.83 an hour, 2.5 percent.

If approved, the raise will be the second in two years for city employees. The Board of Mayor and Aldermen in 2014 approved a 1.75 percent across the board increase in 2014.