Tag: salary

Lampasas Government Personnel Costs – Nearing $80,000 Per Employee

City budgeting is slowly getting underway for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. So I thought it a good time to reflect on government worker pay. One good question I had: what are the TOTAL personnel costs for all city government workers?

That number was easy to find in 2015: according to the July 25th minutes of that year, there was a 4% increase to a grand total of $7,207,856

Since employee count seems to bounce between 100 and 110, I will be conservative and assume 110 employees – or $65,525.96 per employee.

What was the number for 2018? Tough to say, as I was unable to find the exact quote from Finley for that year. I am going to request that number from City Hall today. However, we can make an educated guess.

In July of 2018, as Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert was advocating salary increases for city workers, it was stated that each 1% increase impacted the taxpayer by $61,000 – which tells us that salary expenses were around $6,100,000 last budget.

We also know from Finley’s own admission (Aug 8, 2016) that “City worker benefits comprise 40.8% of salary expense” – 24.3% is retirement, FICA and workers comp while 16.5% is health insurance.

SO – we take $6,100,000 and multiply by 1.408 and we get $8,588,800 for total personnel costs (or a 19% increase in 3 years – a 6.4% increase per year)

If we are charitable and divide this by 110 employees, we come up with $78,080 per employee per year.

If we go with 100 city employees, we get $85,888 per year. I have no idea what the exact current headcount is for Lampasas City government but it is somewhere in that range.

That $78,000 per year is ridiculous enough…but wait til you see how many (or how few) hours some employees actually work each year! Coming soon….

Document Dump – Part III (Monica’s Salary and Benefits)

Every paper-pusher government employee (and their parents) naturally think  they are overworked and underpaid.  They labor under this delusion because a lot of them have LITERALLY never worked in the private sector.  They have no clue what it is like to be under the pressure to perform value-added functions for a profit-driven firm.  They are tax TAKERS and not tax PAYERS.

Now, there are plenty of city employees who bust their ass and are probably underpaid – like the poor bastards who have to wake up at 3am and fix a broken water main or a downed power line.  The people who DO something tangible and have a valuable skill.  Monica Wright is not one of these people.

Monica is in Pay Group 30.  Which, according to the Texas State Auditors Office, means she earns between $101,630 and $171,881 per year.  A range you could drive a truck through, but for sure more than the $100,000 I have been claiming from my very first post (and for which her mommy called me a liar).  We must go to the budget to narrow it down further.

Monica is “Director” of the IT Department.  The IT Department consists of one person – the network administrator….who I suspect is some poor schlub who actually does the hard work of crawling into attics and walls to lay Ethernet cables.  I know that the Network Admin starts in Pay Group 15 (which is a salary of between $33,000 and $52,000).

So, now that we know there are only TWO people in the entire IT Department (a worker and a chick who ‘directs’ him to work) we can look at the budget figures and pin down the salary and benefits further.

In the 2017/2018 budget, the following was printed:

Full time salary: $119,394 (this number has jumped almost 14% in last two years…meaning Monica appears to have gotten a nearly 7% raise in each of the last two years.  WTF??)

Extra pay: $1,418 (I believe this is called “appreciation pay” and is essentially a bonus of one week’s salary paid in December – it is mentioned on page 29 of the employee manual)

Longevity pay: $644 (Monica gets $550 and it will jump to $700 in 2 years)

 

Then come the big fat benefits they never talk about!!

Retirement: $18,255 (according to the Employee Manual, city employees pay 7% into the Texas municipal workers retirement fund, and the city pays in TWICE that amount.  Must be nice.)

Employee insurance: $28,097 (this number has jumped 40% in two years – nobody said why in my records request.)

Three weeks of paid vacation.  Two weeks of sick days (10 days) which can be rolled into the next year if not used.  All twelve holidays off, plus any other granted by city council.  Life insurance payout of one year’s salary in the event of death (paid for by city).  She may or may not have a city car…they won’t tell me.  Oh…and around $800 stipend to pay for a phone.

The amount budgeted for “benefits” has risen 16% in the last two years.

Add all this up and the “salary and benefits” section of the budget, for two people in the IT Department, is close to $180,000.  There is no way Saint Monica makes less than her underling – so I’m guessing that $120,000 in salary is split right about $80,000 to her and $40,000 to the network admin.  Add in all the bennies and you’re talking well over $100,000 in total cost to the taxpayer.

For what?  How competent is Monica (besides the Azbell debacle, I mean)?  Does she come anywhere CLOSE to being worth $105,000 to the city??  Future posts will delve into this matter.