It’s that time of year when budget talks commence and Finley stands there with his hat in hand, telling City council how everyone at City Hall is underpaid.
Don’t believe it.
First, let’s take a look at some numbers from the City’s OWN comprehensive plan [see page 9]. They paid $120,000 for this “plan”, so it must be high-quality and full of accurate information. Here is a chart showing income for the average Lampasshole versus the county and the state:
As you can see, Lampasas median income is FAR lower than both the state of Texas AND Lampasas county when it comes to household income. I have added a red line running from the top of the bar over to the income number. It’s just over $40,000.
[Remember also – every City employee is supposed to live within the City limits – so that “median income” number for City of Lampasas INCLUDES all of our wildly overpaid City workers like Finley himself – thus inflating it. If you were to pull all “City employees” out of that group, the number would be even lower for “non-government employees”!]
I added another line at the $60,000 mark – that represents the average salary for a City worker. According to Finley himself, back in 2019, a 1% COLA adjustment for City payroll represented $64,000 [see page 3]. That means the City payroll was $6,400,000 back then – and has increased a few percent by now. Call it $6.6 million today divided by 110 full-time employees = $60,000 per employee, on average. Or roughly 50% HIGHER than the average schmuck of a taxpayer.
I then added another red line up around the $80,000 mark, as you can see. That is where the average City worker sits, in terms of salary and all the benefits (health, dental, life insurance, workmans comp, and retirement) they receive.
Again, according to Finley himself [see page 3] a 2% savings in health insurance costs saves the City $45,000. This means the entire insurance nut must be $2,250,000. Since $2.25 million x .02 = $45,000. Take that $2.25 million and divide it by 110 full-time workers, and you get $20,454 average cost PER City employee.
We can check this figure another way. Finley has ALSO stated in the past, that benefits are roughly 40% of salary. So we take the $6.6 million salary number and multiply it by 1.4 and get $9.24 million total for salary and benefits. Divide by 110 employees and you get $84,000 PER employee.
If all THAT isn’t enough, consider that the U.S. Census data shows the exact same thing: the typical state and local government worker is FAR better paid than the average taxpayer who foots the bill.
Hopefully, now that we have some PRIVATE sector people on City council, they will understand this better and tell Finley to pound sand on any raises this year. Any City employee making over $65,000 per year should have their salaries frozen for the next five years at LEAST. That would be a great start.
