Well, I called that one. From my January 5th blog post:
I’d make a small wager that Finley promised him a quick raise after 6 months or so. Even money says we see Mr Ward get a bump in salary before the year is out. Any takers??
Well, it wasn’t really a “raise”, per se, according to Assistant TO THE City Manager Ryan Dwight Ward. I had an email discussion about this when I asked him if he had gotten the 3% raise as well – even though he is ALREADY paid far more ($110,000 before COLA raise) than the average ACM ($86,000 according to Salary.com) AND he has only been on the job here for 6 months.
He refused to answer the question, but said a COLA (cost of living adjustment) is not a raise.
Yeah. OK. Semantics, semantics. Bottom line is your already-bloated paycheck is now 3% higher than it was when you started here 180 days ago. Call it whatever you want. The taxpayer pays more no matter what you call it.
In fact ALL of the “overpaid” positions identified in Dwight’s salary study ALSO got the 3% COLA raise last month. Including library director (11.2% higher), parks director (7.3% higher) and police chief (7.9% higher). You’d think that positions already identified as “overpaid” by Dwight would not need an ADDITIONAL 3% raise. But that’s not how it works, see. Only UNDERPAID positions are increased. Nobody is ever decreased due to a “salary” study. Ever.
Which sure feels like cheating to me. But what do I know?
So to recap:
Dwight starts here in January of 2022 as assistant to the City manager and his starting salary was $110,000 – which is about $25,000 HIGHER than a typical ACM salary, according to salary.com
Dwight does a “salary study” in May and uses cities near here that are a lot richer than we are and overpay their City employees even worse – like Marble Falls and Fredericksburg. His own ‘study’ identifies several positions that are “overpaid” by between 7% and 11%. He does this to prep us all for salary boosts in the coming fiscal year 2022/2023.
City council, Finley and Dwight all ignore this fact and give EVERYONE (except Finley, who got a 15% raise in 2020 during pandemic) a 3% raise COLA. INCLUDING those positions already identified as “overpaid” relative to nearby cities.
But this 3% is not a “raise” – it is a Cost of Living Adjustment, Dwight tells me. So it doesn’t really count.
Every 1% raise to City payroll translates into $70,000 out the door (according to Finley himself), whatever you call it. Old City payroll was approximately $7,000,000 for 110 employees ($63,636 per employee). It is now $7,210,000 ($65,545 per employee).
Benefits to City workers (never mentioned by Dwight OR Finley) are now closing in on $3 million per year, since 40% of $7.2 million is $2.8 million. That is an average of $25,400 in benefits per employee.
Total salary and benefits PER EMPLOYEE now around $90,000. This is BEFORE budget negotiations have even started for FY 2022/2023. There will be more to come. They are already talking about another raise COLA on Jan 1, 2023.
Since the pay increase is a percentage, the Big Wigs at the top who are ALREADY ‘overpaid’ (like Dwight or Mandy) see a MUCH bigger raise ($3,300 or $2,300) than the poor schlub working out in the heat fixing water lines and power lines (more like $1,200).
Oh, and Dwight has been on the job for a mere 6 months before the COLAraise was given to him. He knew exactly what he was getting paid when he took the job AND there were THIRTY other applicants for the ATTCM position – so it was CLEARLY already a generous offer. Yet he gets to sip the COLA like everyone else!! Must be sweet.
In addition to the 3% COLA raises, there were also “targeted market adjustments” (NOT raises either, according to Dwight!!) to other positions (adjusted upwards, of course) but none of them were spoken of, so it’s all very secretive. I have no idea who got even more than the 3% COLA raise – but some people definitely did. Hopefully the poor schlubs at the bottom who sweat for a living instead of the Nerf jobbers changing printer cartridges and doing salary studies.
All of this will not stop Finley from angling for even MORE pay increases during budget negotiations over the next two months. Because a COLA is NOT a raise, remember???
I think that about covers it.
Oh, and before you feel sorry for the inflation-ravaged Nerf job holders also don’t forget that plenty of big raises were given out in all those years when we had ZERO inflation.
