The only way to know exactly what the top bananas are getting paid by the City is to make an open records request of paystubs and multiply by 26 pay periods. Govsalaries is a good start, but they are usually behind the curve a bit.
I made such a request last week so we can get a baseline going into the current budget talks where Finey has informed us that they need ANOTHER “4% to 5% increase” in salaries for some personnel.
#1 – City Manager Finley DeGraffenreid: current salary $156,000($6,000 every 2-week pay period). This is the guy who got a secret $10,000 bump from $130,000 to $140,000 during the pandemic. That would be the pandemic when many were losing their jobs and had their businesses forcibly closed by the government. Most City employees got to sit home for weeks on end to “flatten the curve” as well. So we are looking at a $26,000 (20%) increase in three short years.
Pretty good pay for a guy who sits in an air-conditioned office most of the time and who oversaw debacles like the Hostess House “facelift,” the Old City Hall “renovation,” the still-empty Business Pork project and the Ransomware Attack of 2019….and who tends to pay double or triple what a job is worth.
Oh, and he now has an assistant to do his bitch work. So 20% more pay and a lot less work to do. No wonder he hasn’t retired yet. He’s getting handed $6,000 every two weeks to stroll around and say shit like “stakeholders” and “leveraging enterprise funds.”
[Fun Fact: Finley has made $1.85 million over last ten years thanks to Lampasas wildly overcompensating him]
#2 – Assistant to the City manager Ryan Ward: current salary $121,000(up 10% since he was hired 18 months ago). Ryan was overpaid the instant he was hired. Finley started him at $110,000, despite the fact that a typical salary for that position is more like $85,000:
Just MONTHS later, Ryan got a COLA – even though he had just agreed to a starting salary 6 months earlier and had no business at all whining about a cost of living bump.
Ward’s main job seems to be coming up with knew and novel ways to cost the City more and more money to make his own job slightly easier. Like the $38,850 he requested (and got) last year to make it easier to calculate requests for time off from OTHER employees. No, I am not making that up.
Ward also thought (after a mere 7 months on the job) that super special government employees like him needed more perks…like $5 rounds of golf and days off for not being a fat slob. No, I’m not making that up either.
Another thing Ward did was to conduct a “salary study” (using towns like Fredericksburg and Marble Falls) to “prove” how underpaid Lampasas City employees are. Ironically, Ryan himself informed us that the position of Lampasas Police Chief was OVERPAID by about 8%!
The City responded by RAISING the police chief’s salary further. Which brings us to….
#3 – Police Chief Jody Cummings: current salary $103,245(UP 4% from the time Ward informed us he was overpaid by 8% last year). Jody was making “only” $81,540 back in 2019 – and has thus seen a 26.6% increase in the last four years….as he was promoted to chief after Sammy Baily retired.
Oh – and the police chief of Burnet, right down the road and the same size as us, makes about $30,000 LESS than Cummings does.
[Is this a good time to let you know that city council just set this year’s property tax rate at the absolute maximum they could get away with without triggering an election? Or that city employee compensation will surpass $10,000,000 in the budget this year for the first time ever? No? Then I’ll keep quiet about that.]
#4 – Economic Development Director Stacey Ybarra: current salary $85,719 Stacey was hired a mere 8 months ago. But somehow she got started at a salary TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS HIGHER than Mandy Walsh was getting – even though Mandy was in that spot for 5 years and had more letters after her name. Shit like this makes me wonder if Finley has been getting kickbacks all these years. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
Anyhoo – Stacey’s NUMBER ONE PRIORITY (according to her) is to get that Business Park filled up! As of today, it still sits empty. Now, she has CROWED about a “project” being “won” and she has crowed about “20 to 35 jobs” being created by some secret company – but refuses to divulge the name of the company or anything about it.
From where I’m sitting, that looks like being paid $85,719 to lie your ass off. But what do I know. I’m just a stupid taxpayer, here to be milked by goldbrickers.
Don’t forget all the days off too….
Oh, did I also mention the public pool is now closed way earlier than normal? Yeah, we probably don’t have money for that. We need to hike everyone else’s pay “4% to 5%” so they don’t all starve to death on their six-figure salaries.