Without any idea where the road may lead, the City Council will launch a potentially historic process at tonight’s 7 o’clock meeting.
In the setting of an informal discussion intended, ultimately, to spout into a muscular resolution, at the behest of Councilman Andy Weissman, the four surviving Councilmen will open debate on whether medical benefits should be continued after elected officials leave office.
For the past 38 years, it has been not only a tradition but firm City Hall policy to extend them until the end of life.
In the 1970s and ‘80s, who knew? Or cared? Or talked about it?
Since communities started going broke, however, retiree medical benefits have sizzled into the hottest potato in the kitchen.
Which Way Will Mayor Go?
Mayor Mehaul O’Leary will be the man in the middle tonight. “I have no dog in this fight,” he said this afternoon. “I can go whichever direction the Council wants to go. Since we are a four-man Council these days, if there is a split, I will try to swing somebody over to the other side. I expect it to be decided before I speak.”
But how does the Irishman really feel?
That elicits quite a different answer.
“From the beginning, I have said that I don’t need the health benefits because of my wife’s job.
“I have always maintained that if there is a concern that by taking away benefits from the Council you may be diminishing the pool of candidates to run for Council, I don’t want that to happen.”
And then Mayor O’Leary swung into his main theme, first sounded here last month.
“I continue to maintain that raising the (pithy) salaries of Council members (about $100 weekly) and taking away all benefits would be an even better solution,” he said.
The mayor believes $500 weekly would be more appropriate.
“I just think, you want to feel like you are getting compensated for the job you are doing,” he said.
“I think we are averaging about $6.75 an hour. That is not fair compensation. That may not be up for discussion tonight, though. I just think that is crazy.
“Let me ask this question without digging a hole for myself:
“Could it not be that if you are not getting paid for the job you are doing and you are not getting the benefits for the job that you do, couldn’t that breed…? You’ve got to get something, somewhere, out of this.
“You never know where someone could go with this.”
Mayor O’Learty closed with a warning signal:
“If you are not being compensated for a very stressful, time-consuming job you are doing, you may have to look for other means of being compensated. It could be the wrong thing for any government. Look what happened in Bell.”
