A cut City Council should have made

With great fanfare, Salem city councilors waxed poetic about the great accomplishment it was that they hired themselves a budget analyst after ten years of trying. The results are in. Salem city council should now wax poetic about firing their budget analyst. With the school system willingly agreeing to a $30,000 cut in their budget proposal, the city council cut a whopping $41,826 from the city budget, up from $33,000 the prior year. So short of the 30k that the schools said they could give back, city council cut $11,826. Very little of this came from recommendations from the budget analyst, but instead came from Councilor Ronan's fight against raises greater than 2.5%. Several proposed raises above that amount were put off until January, yielding almost all of the savings.

For that meager savings, we paid the new city council budget analyst $20,000. We also gave them a 5% raise next year, and funded the part time position at $21,000. So much for not giving more than 2.5% raises.

What really shows that this isn't a worthwhile position, is what the analyst didn't seem to have a problem with the finance committee cutting. $27,009 from the library, which would have taken them below the amount required for grants and participation in NOBLE. It also would have rescinded several promotions that had already taken place. The budget analyst must have been fine with that. He also must have been fine with elimination of the position of Energy and Sustainability Manager (OK, it sounds like a joke) which brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, and he was OK with a $6,100 cut that is used to compensate someone for doing two jobs, necessitating the hiring of another full time employee at more than 50k plus benefits. Either the budget analyst never learned the implications of these cuts, or he's bad at math. I'm good at math, and can tell you that the work product doesn't warrant another year and another $21,000. City council should cut the position.

Reader finds: Corruption at SESD?

I receive emails from time to time, and I share them with you. I received the below last week. Do I know that it's true? Absolutely not. I make no such claim. I hope it's not true, because if it is, it stinks. I thought about whether or not to print this. The truth is, I researched SESD and it is extremely difficult to find any information about them. They have no website, and no budget is published online.

From: REDACTEDDate: Subject: South Essex Sewage District Compensation 'Fraud'To: "keepitklassysalem@gmail.com" <keepitklassysalem@gmail.com>

Hi KeepitKlassy:
I love your blog.  I tweet under the handle "Redacted".

I'd like to relay this story to you- I heard it from a well-placed family member.  I hope I can describe this accurately enough to make sense, but numbers and policies and unions aren't really my thing.  Here goes anyway:

SESD executives are basically using union negotiation as a way to reward themselves and special grandfathered employees with cadillac health plans and insane compensation and benefits post-retirement.  Here's how I understand it to work:

Way back when, the unions negotiated a very sweet healthcare deal that some employees still have, as well as management.
- the 'special' healthcare plans are 90/10 (employee pays 10%)
- everyone else is 75/25
- some 'special' employees are grandfathered into a really amazing deal that literally costs them $28/week for the entire family  (it won't surprise you to know that the executive director, for example, is one such special employee)

But here's where it gets good:
- everybody gets the same deduction taken out of their check for healthcare
- the special employees, however, get a kickback in the form of "additional compensation" added to their check so that they only have to pay that 10%, not the full 25% like everyone else.
- That additional compensation has some fairly vast implications for the municipalities that are paying into the plant for sewage treatment; for example, they have to pay worker's comp on those dollars
- Further, that additional comp costs us more money by figuring itself into overtime:  Since that sum is rolled into an hourly formula, some employees' time and a half is really double time;
- Also, when someone retires, they get a pension.  That pension is over-inflated because the 'additional compensation' is figured into their overall salary
- the executive director and the executive director before him all benefit from this very scheme.  They have a clear conflict of interest, though, because they're the ones negotiating with the union and approving the plan.  And once they approve the plan they go ahead and reward themselves with the very plans they just "negotiated"
- at the most recent negotiation the executive director is quoted as saying "if healthcare comes up the meeting is over".
- all other employees have to choose from two cadillac (and very expensive) HMO and Master Medical Insurance Plans.
it's so "let them eat cake!"  And it's costing the municipalities that pay into water treatment millions over the years.  Someone should have Mayor Driscoll and other mayors look into this.

Redacted

According to the Lynn Item, South Essex Sewerage District Director Arthur Knight earns $112,250 and his top engineer makes $97,444. Whether or not that includes "additional compensation" or not, if such a thing exists, is unclear.

Why should Salem residents care about this? Well, according to the proposed fiscal year 2012 Salem Budget, the city of Salem will send SESD $6,140,898 for our share of the FY 2012 operating budget of SESD. That cost is passed on to you in your sewer bill, and for city buildings, in your property taxes. Salem City Engineer David Knowlton represents the city on the SESD Board of Directors.

Peabody expects to pay $8,982,776 in FY 2012. Beverly has budgeted $5,726,042. So that's 20 million dollars a year, without factoring in the other communities that use them, which include Marblehead, Danvers, and Middleton.

Quincy city councilor Brian McNamee (no, not that one) is the Treasurer at SESD. Why do I think that as a Quincy resident, and city councilor down there, he's not putting in as much time as he should up here? Have you ever tried to commute to Quincy from Salem? It would be rich if the allegations above are true, as McNamee just voted against the city budget for Quincy because a proposed reorganization in the DPW wouldn't yield any savings. (Also note, this article gives a real life example of why it was important for the "Pinto Jobs for Councilors Bill" to fail.)

That's about all one can learn about SESD without really doing a lot of heavy digging. It was digging to find this much. It's enough to know that this is really big business. It's a little shocking that they don't even appear to have a web site.

These allegations at least smell bad, and don't seem ethical, if true. Depending on how it's been handled they may well be illegal. The mayors of the communities that use SESD should ask some tough questions about expenses, especially since each community got a much bigger bill for 2012. They should also ask for a little more openness and info sharing for the citizens who foot the bill.

_________

Later this week, the other email I received last week, which paints everyone's favorite warlock (and I don't mean Charlie Sheen) in not the best light.

City Council budget fun

This past Thursday was a busy, busy night for the city council. In fact, the 7 o'clock meeting went well over four hours long. Even the public testimony portion of the meeting went over its allotted time. Councilor Pinto wouldn't know, as he walked in around 7:30. Smart man. Not nice to skip the public testimony, but hey. Why was this meeting so long? It's all about the benjamins! Passing the budget was a good 3 hours of the meeting.

Also on the agenda was the amended comprehensive parking plan we discussed here, the concept of meeting with deceiver or dummy (your choice) Lisa Abbate, and Councilor Ronan's proposal to have city council vote on tax rate increases on an annual basis, which we've discussed numerous times, here for one.

Councilor Lovely seems to have at least partially seen the light on the parking enforcement issue. She spoke about how much work the parking study group had put into their recommendations, and the council met a couple of times and proposed wholesale changes. She then modified the committee recommendation to enforce on-street parking meters until 8PM, while keeping the council's recommendation to stop enforcement at 6PM in the parking lots, and not enforce anywhere on Sundays. It's a compromise that shows Lovely's regular good sense, and will improve the downtown parking availability situation on the streets at least. I still think they should have accepted the parking study proposal, but this is better than the council's original recommendation.

Councilor Ronan's tax voted proposal was on the agenda with a committee recommendation for first passage, but when councilor Lovely provided the committee report she made a motion to send it back to committee to continue the legal review of what would be allowable and effective in reaching councilor Ronan's goal. The mayor, who was present to address any budget questions that arose, spoke vehemently against this ordinance, which I totally support. That said, her argument was a good one, and was really classic Kim Driscoll. Watch it below.