In a totally unexpected move, City manager (current salary and benefits of roughly $210,000 or over $4,000 per week) suggested 4% to 5% pay raises during this budget cycle. This on TOP of raises and COLAs last year.
I find this odd, because according to local democrats, the CPI is only 3% now.
As you can see, police Chief Jodi Cummings agreed heartily. He uses the age-old bullshit of “keeping up with the other cities” as his ammunition. Because, we are like, right on the edge of Austin…or something.
Ryan Ward likes to use towns like Fredericksburg and Marble Falls to compare salaries, so that they all look underpaid. However, when he did that last year, it showed our police chief is actually OVERPAID by 7.9%!!
Whoops! So you think they’ll lower it 8% this year? I’m guessing not.
They always trot out the old “these people will leave for Austin if we don’t pay them!” nonsense every year. You know what I say? Fuck it – let them go to Austin. They get paid more there because it is a liberal shit hole with a much higher cost of living and has the worst traffic in the state. Go right ahead and leave for Austin, if you are that stupid.
You want to know how else I know the police chief is overpaid (besides the fact that Ryan Ward told us so last year)? Because Brian Lee, the police chief of Burnet (right down the road) makes a lot less than Jodi Cummings! Imagine that!
Lee pulls down $73,544 and Cummings makes 36% MORE at $100,000. Something tells me you could inform old Jodi he’s only going to make $90,000 next year and he would not go anywhere. And if he did? I could think of a few coppers who would be more than happy to step into that position for $90,000 (plus another $36,000 in benefits!)
In fact, when Burnet searched for a new chief two years ago, they had EIGHTY APPLICANTS for the job! When you have 80 applicants for a job, that is the free market telling you that you are offering a mighty fine salary and might want to lower it a bit.
I’ll repeat: Burnet pays their chief $73,500 and they got EIGHTY APPLICANTS for the job.
But according to some, if we do not pay six figures to every Tom, Dick and dickless, they will immediately run to the big city with more traffic, higher costs and more pains in the ass.
OK. If you believe that one, I have a bridge to sell you.
If I’m not mistaken, when Lampasas was searching for an assistant City manager, they had over FIFTY applicants! Of course, that didn’t stop Finley from overpaying for the “talent” by about $25,000. Ward was offered $110,000 (bumped to $116,000 very quickly) when the national average for ACM is more like $85,000.
I do all this research as a public service for City council: do NOT fall for the bullshit that anybody will leave if they don’t get 5% more money this year. Council has ALREADY been EXTREMELY generous in years past when there was no inflation at all:
Time to reign in the reckless spending and show some of these highly-paid bureaucrats that they can’t put a gun to your heads with this “we’ll move to Austin” bullshit.