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Judy Gold: The new employee structure and pay reviewed by commission on Tuesday needs to be revisited. The ladies are right on and you and your colleagues are dead wrong.
Mayor John Harabedian: Thanks, Judy -- why am I dead wrong? I'm asking because I would honestly like to know what parts of the plan you agree with and why the City should implement them now. I thought your husband made some very good comments at the meeting, and like him, I could not justify increasing our General Fund budget by $63,000 through this plan -- plain and simple. I think that any reorganization plan should be saving the City money, not costing it.
That being said, I think parts of plan have some real merit (hence why we did implement certain aspects of it on Tuesday night), and we will be revisiting the other portions of the plan during our budget discussions. Happy to discuss, John
Judy Gold: Mr. Harabedian, do you always agree with your wife's opinions? Barry and I are not joined at the hip and on Tuesday he was still confused. I can't speak to his feelings at this point. Neither of us are totally competent to understand the jargon used in these plans. Originally, I thought too, that an increase in salaries is not a good thing. I gave the matter some thought. The plan places caps on the higher salaries. For instance, if an employee makes 100,000 plus in perks, the plan would raise him 15,000 but decrease his benefits by 5,000. The employee retires. If the plan is not in place, a new person might get 140,000 plus perks of at least 20,000. That's 50,000 more right there. Right now we have nothing in place to control salary. We would be asked to pay more taxes and have McMansions forced down our throats. The plan also gives 5 years to cut salaries and number of employees. By staff admission, city employees have 22% higher perks than the norm. This is a start.
The cuts the city has made up to this point are negligible. At this point, it seems to be more in favor of employees than the citizens that must pay for them.
The screams from the library people are really off putting. With the advent of e-books, Internet, etc. the library is becoming a burden financially. I hate to see it go as they were important to me growing up. But no longer. Too many employees for the services required.
The same could be said of the Police Department. Certainly it can be outsourced. Perhaps there could be a compromise. Keep a small patrol force and outsource the rest. Several months ago, some ornaments were stolen from our yard. After the police department got a good laugh out of it and asked what they were supposed to do about it, we provided them with our camera tape. We were able to identify the kids as students from La Salle. We got pictures of their car. A policeman watched the student drive from the school, stopped him and told him he wanted the return of the items. We were told we would be contacted as to the disposition of the case. No one from Sierra Madre called. We called and were told the DA would call. That never happened. We weren't out for blood. All we wanted was to know that the school had been told (which according to them, were unaware), and some response from the parents. Small deal, but for a city this size, lots of things should be taken more seriously.
There are several other incidents in which we involved the Police, because I guess that's what law abiding folks do, and little or nothing was done regarding a repeat happening that could have grave consequences. My dealing with them would be the same as the Sheriff. But I wouldn't expect as much nor have to pay as much. If the police and fire are combined, so what? We are little more than a village with our population. Our tax base cannot afford these salaries and benefits. The plan is a start.
You seemed to dislike the structure plan. It minimizes micromanagement, cross trains, allows for advancement, eliminates several supervisors. In essence it streamlines the present system. What more could you ask?
The General Plan needs to be finished. The municipal code needs to reflect the general plan. The new person hired for Mr. Castro's job needs to have that in place. The new department title has the word preservation in it. That is key.
There is more I can say, but I don't think you intended to read a tome. I will leave it at that.
Interested to hear your take. Judy Gold
Mayor John Harabedian: Hi Judy -- this is helpful, thank you. I cannot say that I disagree with you on much of this. I do think there are some lingering questions about the structure itself that I have (mainly, whether it does more harm then good), but to me, the big thing here is timing and sequence -- I want to get our budget in order and then plan for the future in terms of salaries, benefits, structure, etc. Some would disagree with that and say that you get the structure and salaries in place, and then talk about the budget. But I just don't think that makes sense -- with the UUT sunsetting, we have a task of cutting around $800K from the General Fund (nearly 10% of our budget), and that to me should be the council's first priority. After we determine how we're going to do that (with an eye towards benefits and salaries), then I think we will be well positioned to start deciding on structure and compensation.
Doing it the other way around seems silly to me -- for example, why agree to give 10-20% raises to employees (while capping benefits) and tie salaries to a market rate before you've decide which departments and positions will still be in existence in 2 years? In other words, let's say we instituted the plan as presented: we re-organized and offered the compensation packages as proposed. But then, as we were going through the budget process, we realized we could no longer support a fire department, police department, community services department, or a library (one or all of those things) -- what was the point of reorganizing and implementing the compensation packages if we are only having to unwind the structure altogether (which is altogether possible)?
Also, on the savings on health care plans, I think we should also consider the fact that those savings were offset by corresponding salary increases, and salary increases bring deferred pension liabilities and costs for the city, while health care costs don't. So, while you save on health care costs, you increase your PERS costs -- something that has killed local municipalities up and down this state. We have done a good job of keeping our pension liabilities in check and I want to keep it that way.
Finally, my wife and I disagree all the time, and she is 99% of the time right on those occasions. She is a much wiser person than me, and probably would make a better Mayor, but is smart enough not to run for office. John
(Mod: My takeaway here is that Mayor Harabedian seems committed to making the kinds of cuts necessary to make a 6% UUT work. Or so he is saying. Even to the point of actually delaying City Hall employment and organizational reforms over a relatively minor expense, which are both necessary and way overdue. And John does indulge himself in some unfortunate hostage taking here. Not being able to afford a volunteer fire department is a bit of a stretch. It will be interesting to see how deep the Mayor's commitment actually is, and if he will stick with this tomorrow evening.)
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