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| Council approves executive pay raise By Mark Noack [ mark@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Thursday, November 20, 2008 4:05 PM PST The Half Moon Bay City Council approved a salary increase for its executive staff with a 4-1 vote during a meeting Tuesday night. The approved resolution affects only the permanent directors of city departments, including the police chief and planning director. Both positions will receive a 3 percent cost of living raise. The resolution also includes gives an additional 2.9 percent salary increase to the police chief to match a raise the city’s police officers received in September to bring them up to median pay. Indirectly, the council’s decision also gives a raise to City Manager Marcia Raines, due to a clause in her employment contract that gives her a 10 percent higher salary than the highest-paid department head, which is currently the police chief. “When the police chief’s salary goes up, the city manager gets a raise also,” said Finance Director Hector Lwin. All three directors will receive back pay from July of this year. The exact amount that the three city leaders will be earning was not immediately available. Each director position is paid on a job-performance scale, which pays the planning director $112,236 to $136,392, the police chief $144,228 to $175,272. The city manager could earn anywhere from $158,651 to $192,799. Coming during a city financial crisis, the executive raise was strongly criticized by members of the public, who asked the council not to approve it. “It’s quite clear that this timing is lacking any sensitivity for our current position,” said George Muteff. “Some view this item the same as giving a bonus to the executives that failed Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and GM.” The City Council majority, however, emphasized that the important part of this resolution was the formal compensation guidelines for the city’s department heads. Without going into specifics, council members said human resources problems have riddled City Hall in recent years. “It’s really bad timing that this is coming forward… but this has been a project coming for a long time,” said Councilwoman Naomi Patridge. “We needed to get our mid-management and executive team into a position where we could have a compensation plan they never had.” Councilman Jim Grady, the lone dissenting vote, said it was inappropriate to be giving directors a raise while the city was in the process of making large cuts. “Timing is everything,” he said during the meeting. “We’re looking at cuts to staff, cuts to budget, and to me it’s a bit of a Catch-22 to be giving increases tonight to not know what the full picture is.” |