Photo coutesy MV Dispatch
On Wednesday, October 20th about 180 people attended a Legislative Oversight Hearing in Santa Ana that addressed the topic of Transparency and Accountability.
“Three of the Committee’s members participated in the oversight hearing: Senator Christine Kehoe, Vice Chair, Senator Sam Aanestad and Senator Mark DeSaulnier.”
Background. When I was a candidate for the Mission Viejo city council in 1994 city staff and our city attorney refused to provide managers’ salary information in response to my Public Records request. They only shared salary ranges for each manager questioning my right as a Mission Viejo taxpayer to have the actual data.
As a result of this recent Senate Local Government meeting, triggered by the ongoing financial exposures in the city of Bell, I just tested our city’s compliance for the same information and received the following data.
Dennis Wilberg, our city manager. W-2 box 5 $245,699.04 Sect. 125 Cafeteria Plan, Long Tem Disability, Retiree Health Ins adds $23322.19. Life insurance $388.80, car allowance $6,853.95, cell phone allowance $1,495.26 and pension contributions paid by the City of Mission Viejo $59,346.11. Total $337,105.35
The objective of receiving this data is to project future funding obligations for our city government based on current staffing, wages and benefits.
While I will not provide the same level of details for the other 13 individuals that I selected, last years pension obligations for these 14 employees totals $463,832.07. With approximately 150 employees this becomes a sizable future expenditure to consider.
The fact that we are going to a different benefit program for future hires is irrelevant. The contract city of Mission Viejo, that does not have its own police, fire or sanitation departments, is built out and has a hiring freeze.
The following was last year’s total compensation as reported by Mission Viejo:
Irwin Bornstein, Asst. CM $283,434.36
Karen Wylie, Deputy City Manager $180,076.33
Karen Hamman, City Clerk $191,101.71
Charles Wilson, Dir. Community Dev. $218,279.89
Jackie Alexander, Dir. I.T. $227,085.89
Valerie Maginnis, Dir Library & Cultural Svcs. $222,512.33
Keith Rattay, Dir Public Services $243,222.47
Mark Chagnon, Dir Public Works $199,249.56
Kelly Doyle, Dir Rec & Community Svcs., $216,630.93
Kathy Rios, Sr. Exec. Asst. $108,587.26
Steve Bell, Community Svcs. Mgr., $175,467.63
Paul Catsimanes, Public Svce Admin. Mgr., $172,348.41
David Cendejas, Senior Mgmt. Analyst $132,329.42
Let me close this report by stating that in industry we engaged in “benchmarking” our product and process against the best manufacturers in other industries around the globe. The word of caution is that too many cities compare themselves and their staff’s with each other to justify what I believe to be excessive compensation if compared with the private sector.
Some time back I reported the compensation of our governor with the huge number of departments and staffs’ under his leadership. Another illustration used by me was the governor of Texas.
TX Governor Rick Perry earns $150,000 per year and has a staff of 267 reporting directly to him.
The State of Texas, with a population of arond 25 million, has a two year budget of $182 billion dollars. Dennis Wilberg, our city manager, in a city of 100,000 inhabitants, makes twice as much as Gov. Rick Perry.
Comparing any data point between Rick Perry and Dennis Wilberg I would opine that our compensation thought process is out of whack which can be blamed on past council members approving his annual contract agreements.
On a local level. To compare the compensation of Laguna Hills City Manager Bruce Channing as the basis for other cities wage and benefit increases is a very dangerous benchmark regardless of how efficiently he runs their contract city with 27 full time employees. The same comment applies to similar staff positions.
I do wish to thank the city for responding to my latest Public Records request without any roadblocks within the 10 day window for providing a response.
The cities of Orange County compare themselves to each other in the pay race.
cook.
Therein lies the problem. Sadly many of our orange county council members have never had personal experience in writing corporate checks to pay for employee services.
Approving city manager wages is so easy when it’s OPM. And to top it off he or she decides how much to compensate all the employees who report to that office.
The only direct responsibility council has is to their city manager, city attorney and city clerk contracts if the Clerk reports to council which is no longer the case in Mission Viejo.
Another email from Mission Viejo.
“Looks like we pay our City staff way too much! Who sets the pay scale? I should think the City Council who is elected by the people should be the ones, but I bet that isn’t the case. ”
And my response. We hire the city manager who sets the pay scale of his employees, not the city council members.
Obviously the budget has some impact on how funds can be spent.
Another MV watchdog raises some questions in his email response and challenges me as noted below:
“What is relevant is what some of these folks actually do for what we pay them:
For example, do you actually know what a Senior Management Analyst does for $132,000 a year? And he’s low on the salaried totem pole. I see him as the Murray Center, and although I know him, I have no clue what he actually does.
Another example: What does an IT Director do in a City of 100,000 souls that warrants a paycheck of $227,000 a year? That’s $4,365. a week,,,,,,for a five day week, that amounts to $873 bucks a day !! And, just so we don’t lose the point here, exactly what are the duties and responsibilities of an IT Director? What in the world can her job entail that can earn her more than,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN?????
How about your interviewing some of our “civil servants” and asking them point blank what they do?”
Larry……..that was very good.[seriously] thats a lot of money.!
These numbers are staggering to say the least. Ding Dong BELL has been also in Mission Viejo.
Two email responses. One from Mission Viejo and a second from north county.
First . A reporter recently commented to me: “In my next life I want to be a city employee.”
Second reply. I should have listened to my father and got a job in government
Another email from south county.
“thanks for your dilligence Larry.
this is absolutely disgusting.”
Folks.
I will ask members of the new city council to request job descriptions, a city organizational chart and consider a current “needs assessment” of our city staffing.
One department manager that I did not include in my Public Records request was the head of our animal shelter.
We transfer in $467,611 to that department. Said another way we “subsidize” the animal shelter to the tune of a half million dollars last year after payments received from the participating south county cities. As such I would be curious to now where the money goes. When it first opened in the early 1990s the roughly $200,000 subsidy was to eventually be phased out.
A sidebar. One thing for sure. We have thousands of registered animal owners in our city, including ourselves. While we should question any expenditures that seem unreasonable, the use of caring volunteers for these pets and strays has diminished the cost of their operations.
wow before we set our hair on fire and chop off Dennis’ head, where does MV rank over all? I mean among cities in CA, or a more fair comparison of among all 50 Governors. Sure easy to find one who makes less I’m sure, but the only full-picture being provided here is that you have something against Dennis which has been apparent for a long long time.
I suspect you want to be city manager still. You have always wanted to be city manager and that will never change. Neither will the fact that you will never be city manager. The good news is that I can have 200 people at your house by 3 pm today to help you pack. We’ll even rent the u-haul for you.
LBM.
No. I have an issue with every city manager who games the public. What we have is a financial ladder in which they take turns getting on the lowest wrung and proceed to climb up by comparing their wages to their peers to justify their compensation packages. That my friend is NOT valid benchmarking.
I have an issue with the Laguna Hills city manager Bruce Channing’s $460,809 total compensation as they only have 27 FTE’s.
At $190,000 I would make the same comment about the city manager in Aliso Viejo with their 14 employees.
Your latest comment shows your true agenda. As a regular reader, and one who has hammered me on many of my posts, you never commented when I posted those neighboring cities financials back on July 16th?
This only confirms your hatred of me that goes with the territory.
In that report I also included our gov. who has 154 people reporting directly to him as he tries to oversee our state’s 34-36 million people, a number slightly higher than Mission Viejo’s 100,000 population.
Gov. Schwarzenegger’s listed salary, that he does not take, is $206,500.
Therefore I did include another governor simply to make a point.
No city manager should be compensated one quarter million dollars a year.
The true compensation benchmark is the private sector where we engage in risk reward
While I look forward to a turkey tomorrow, I didn’t expect to hear from one today.
Email from Laguna Hills vendor.
“Larry, UNREAL for a city of 100,000.
Tom”
Little Big Man
Instead of addressing the issue–you attack Larry Gilbert. Stay on topic LBM !!The facts are presented on the various MV city salaries. Why not address the issue–of equivalent pay scales. You might start with our Congressman, then our Senator. Larry has already given your VP’s salary.
So LBM–turn about is fair play–I will be happy to help you pack your bags, your household goods, and pay myself for Mayflower to back their van up to your door, and wave goodbye to you !!
Joe. Perhaps I should add the national wages of public employees to make LBM go away.
Lets begin with the 2010 compensation for members of Congress at $174,000.
Nancy Pelosi, our native leader for now, makes $223,500 as Speaker. She is followed by the majority and minority leaders whose wages are $193,400 or less than our librarian whose package is $1,000 less than the Speaker of the House. Go figure.
Watchdogs and the new council need to visit our entire staffing and justification for their outrageous wages and benefits.
PS: Although the comparison between our city librarian and Speaker of the House is not a perfect illustration, as Valerie Maginnis does not have acces to military jets to fly from DC to SF, she lives in Mission Viejo and does receive a car allowance of $3,738.42 The taxpayers of MV, via our city treasury, contribute $34,397.67 to her pension. That sum was included in her total reported compensation (that according to the Public Records response includes PERS and deferred compensation).
Joe. Based on our own experiences in industry we surely will agree that they would never receive that level of compensation in the private sector.
Another email from a MV property owner.
“I agree. Forget bengkulu against other cities. Rather, benchmark our city ‘civil servants’ against private industry positions. What our city employees are being paid is outrageous. Nearly a mini-Bell.”
There is a citizen action going on in Brea where a petition has been successfully submitted with sufficient verified resident signatures to put a compensation ordinance on the Nov ballot. The purpose is to bring the city manager and other senior city executives’ pay more in line with those they govern. The initiative calls for the city manager’s compensation to be set to a multiple of the city’s median household income as stated by the 2010 US Census. See: http://articles.ocregister.com/2011-06-21/news/29691396_1_brea-measure-brea-city-signatures
I would like to place a similar initiative on the ballot in the city I reside in and am wondering it anyone in the OJ Blog has any knowledge about how to go about doing this or is in a similar process of doing so.
The compensation for city managers and other senior staff in practically all OC cities is obscene to say the least. I find it hard to understand how a city manager of a city of 37,000 requires a $300K compensation package when senior federal employees like the Secretary of Defense earns $199,000. Are these cities harder to manage than the Pentagon? Does a city manager deserve twice the salary than the Governor? I think not.
Also, does anyone know of an city ordinances that require the city attorney to be a city employee rather that a outside contracted one. These contracted city attorneys working for mega law firms seem to have their priorities misplaced as they seem more concerned about ginning up as much legal services work for their respective law firms than the cities they represent, which is draining large amount of taxpayers’ dollars into their private firms.
Thanks in advance