City budgeting is slowly getting underway for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. So I thought it a good time to reflect on government worker pay. One good question I had: what are the TOTAL personnel costs for all city government workers?
That number was easy to find in 2015: according to the July 25th minutes of that year, there was a 4% increase to a grand total of $7,207,856
Since employee count seems to bounce between 100 and 110, I will be conservative and assume 110 employees – or $65,525.96 per employee.
What was the number for 2018? Tough to say, as I was unable to find the exact quote from Finley for that year. I am going to request that number from City Hall today. However, we can make an educated guess.
In July of 2018, as Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert was advocating salary increases for city workers, it was stated that each 1% increase impacted the taxpayer by $61,000 – which tells us that salary expenses were around $6,100,000 last budget.
We also know from Finley’s own admission (Aug 8, 2016) that “City worker benefits comprise 40.8% of salary expense” – 24.3% is retirement, FICA and workers comp while 16.5% is health insurance.
SO – we take $6,100,000 and multiply by 1.408 and we get $8,588,800 for total personnel costs (or a 19% increase in 3 years – a 6.4% increase per year)
If we are charitable and divide this by 110 employees, we come up with $78,080 per employee per year.
If we go with 100 city employees, we get $85,888 per year. I have no idea what the exact current headcount is for Lampasas City government but it is somewhere in that range.
That $78,000 per year is ridiculous enough…but wait til you see how many (or how few) hours some employees actually work each year! Coming soon….