I had never heard of Kristi Allison before last night but she needs to immediately be installed as Mayor. If fact, we should toss out Monroe, Williamson and Kuehne and let Allison take the place of all three of them simultaneously.
She got up at the 10:15 mark and gave City council a tremendous schooling on the reality of lifeguard wages and ALSO on how our pools do not charge nearly enough – something I brought up almost THREE YEARS AGO.
This chick said she is a high school teacher and a master swimmer. She was also the most eloquent speaker I have ever heard up there. She hit ALL the major important points: you need to pay $15 an hour for lifeguards, our pools don’t charge nearly enough, and out-of-towners need to be charged more to use the pool. You also need to pay the pool manager more (currently $13/hr) because it is an important job.
She ALSO told them the kids need deadlines on fliers advertising the job in the schools. Great idea because high school kids are terrible procrastinators.
This all seems like common sense and something the City should know by now after decades of doing this, but they don’t.
I have been banging the drum on this for almost three years now – and it is part of a larger theme: there is a new reality in the labor market. The people that actually DO the hard work (linemen, guys who fix water mains, guys who mow the lawns and trim trees and make the world go around) need to be paid a LOT better compared to the useless, overpaid, Nerf-job holders at the top of the food chain.
The middle-manager paper pushers (Ryan Ward, Monica Wright, Stacey Ybarra) who sit in the air conditioning all day and send emails to each other need to take a big pay cut and that money can be applied to City employees who work for a living. If they don’t like it, then sayonara. We’ll get by without you.