The current budget hasn’t been officially “approved” yet, but I reminded them that, according to the City’s own charter [SECTION 6.02]:
The budget shall be finally adopted not later than the fifteenth (15) day of the last month of the fiscal year. Should the Council take no final action on or prior to that day, the budget, as submitted, shall be deemed to have been finally adopted by the Council.
So it’s now in my possession.
CITY EMPLOYEE SALARIES – TOTAL
Current budget salaries: $7.313 million
New budget salaries: $7.793 million
Change: UP 6.5%
CITY EMPLOYEE BENEFITS – TOTAL
Current budget benefits: $3.186 million
New budget benefits: $3.676 million
Change: UP 15.4%(!!!)
My god. The cost to the taxpayer for all the cushy benefits just went up over FIFTEEN PERCENT! Almost a HALF A MILLION BUCKS. That’s your gold-plated health insurance, dental, eye, life insurance, DOUBLE matching on retirement contributions, etc.
Combined salaries and benefits for all employees (roughly 116 people) comes to $11.469 million. VERY close to my guess last month of “well over $11 million dollars” or $99,000 PER EMPLOYEE on average.
Must be nice! But Ryan Ward will STILL tell you how underpaid he is! Speaking of Dwight Schrute himself, let’s look at the City Manager’s expenses, shall we? As far as I know, it’s still just Finley and Dwight on the payroll. So these are for two people.
City manager department salaries and benefits current budget: $381,889
New budget: $399,338
Change: UP 4.6%
Only a measly 4.6%? Must have something to do with highly-paid Finley retiring in a month and the new guys making less.
Some other random departments:
City secretary department: UP 13%
IT Department: UP 9.3%
Parks & Recreation: UP a massive 42%! Looks like a few new hires – salaries and bennies up big. Only way to see that is hiring a few more guys.
Police Department: UP 7.4%
Fire Department: UP 20% (!!!) (I even removed large capital expenses like last year’s $800,000 fire engine, etc)
Some hella big increases in there! Certainly not the kind of budget made up by anyone who is maybe expecting a recession in the next year.
You know what WASN’T increased a single penny? The salaries at Hannah Springs pool! That will be EXACTLY the same. You know the Hannah Springs pool? The one they can never attract enough workers for? That one.
Total operating expenses for the City (this includes electric fund) is now just a hair under $37 million at $36.712 million. Previous was $33.910 million – for an increase of 8.26%. Not exactly austerity.
More to come when the ACTUAL line-item budget is approved after next council meeting.