HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-09-2014 A rschmidtKremke, Kate
From: Mejia, Anthony
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 8:47 AM
To: Kremke, Kate
Subject: FW: City Manager /Atty Pay
Agenda Correspondence for Closed Session Item A for 04/09/14.
Anthony J. Mejia I City Clerk
City of San Luis Obispo
990 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
tel 1 805.781.7102
F C i^:
R 14 2014
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AGENDA
cORRESRONDE NC E
Date- -` I Item* -
- - - -- Original Message---- -
From: rschmidt @rain.org [mailto:rschmidt @rain.org]
Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2014 10:22 AM
To: Marx, Jan; dcarpen @slocity.org; Ashbaugh, John; Smith, Kathy; Christianson, Carlyn; Mejia, Anthony
Subject: City Manager /Atty Pay
Dear Council Members,
I recently read a press report stating that you are about to increase the pay of the city manager and city attorney. I have
searched your agenda, and can find no such item, which puzzles me. I have to assume the press knows something your
agenda doesn't reveal, and offer the following comment on such pay increases.
1. There is zero justification for any increase in pay for these executive positions. The city manager is already paid more
than the governor of California, and, really, can you justify that to the public? Her job doesn't justify higher pay than the
governor's.
2. The manager's compensation package already has her making about 6 times the median household income in SLO,
and that's just her side of her household's income stream. It would appear that her household is getting quite wealthy,
courtesy of your transfer of wealth from your constituents'
pocketbooks into hers. How can you justify any further increase? How do you explain this to your constituents whose
water and sewer bills are being boosted annually in part to pay for the manager's and attorney's already bloated pay?
(Hahl You've never explained THAT part of the constantly escalating water /sewer bills to the public, have you ?)
3. The assumption is apparently that increases in your executive's pay are pretty much guaranteed so long as the
recipients don't have negative job performance reviews. Since the public isn't privy to such performance review
outcomes, we can only assume that your regular boosts in pay to city hall's .01% reflect your satisfactory reviews --
which, frankly, those of us attempting to live in this city cannot understand given the way the city's management
practices and legal positions have degenerated and dragged a once magnificent place in which to reside into the sewer.
These people, in the eyes of residents, are not the leaders this city needs. The public doesn't understand your
apparently favorable performance ratings.
4. The very idea of automatic executive pay increases in this day is repugnant, and totally out of touch with the reality in
which the rest of us live. It stinks of Wall Street thinking. Like many city residents, I am a public employee. My employer
has provided zero pay increases for 6 years to the rank and file (with one minor exception -- a much - appreciated $800
per year increase last year), even reneging on negotiated increases that were due early in that period. Most people
aren't getting pay increases.
Many are getting pay cuts. Many have lost jobs (the primary wage earner in our household, for example, has been
unemployed for more than a year), and have little prospect of ever working again; that is the reality of the people whose
pockets you are picking to pay your executives excessively.
You need to reconsider your practices with city hall's .01 %. Why should those at the top get regular increases, while
most do not get them? (That
$800 increase mentioned above is actually an interesting example of the reverse of what you are perpetually doing with
executive pay -- a form of leadership you might desire to emulate. When a small fund became available last year for pay
increases, the usual suspects including unions lobbied for a percentage increase for all. The boss, CSU Chancellor White,
said no, that wasn't fair, since people at the top, who already had more than enough, would get more than people at the
bottom, who were really hurting.
So he divided the money equally, giving an equal share to everyone, not a percentage. Not a perfect solution, but more
fair than raising those at the top the most.)
5. Now that John Fowler has exposed the fundamental mendacity underlying the city's claims about what Measure Y
funds have been used for, it is clear that the council would be irresponsible to boost executive pay further. If the
recipients of that already excessive pay don't like not getting still more, let them see if they can find a better deal
elsewhere.
Neither is indispensable.
Richard Schmidt