Re “You Are Working Less, Mr. Malsin. What Are You Giving Back?”
The six City Hall employee associations and City Manager John Nachbar have been hard at work, bargaining with each other in good faith. On the hard bargaining table is this concept – save more city jobs now and manage future retirement costs better. Thanks to a 4 to 0 City Council vote, we Culver City taxpayers have a win/win budget deal on the table.
Councilman Scott Malsin ran his campaign for office as a “practical man” ready to make the hard choices necessary in budgetary matters.
He said he knew the value of contracts. Please allow me to state a correction to last week’s op-ed where I mentioned that Mr. Malsin supported a 15 percent pay raise for the City Manager. Upon further research, I find there were two procedural votes by Mr. Malsin to increase the City Manager’s salary in the 2007-2008 annual City-Redevelopment Agency budgets.
For those of us watching the budget hearings, we witnessed the City Manager request handsome raises for most of the management staff in City Hall. Is that best way to solve a tough budget year, by first increasing City Hall administrative overhead?
The City Manager proposed a budget that called for a 13 percent raise for himself. Before the ink could dry on the annual budget, Mr. Malsin voted for an additional 7 percent for the City Manager.
Upon final adoption, the City Manager was given a 20 percent raise on top of the very highest executive salary that our city has to offer to any employee.
By September 2008, the City Manager announced his retirement. I know that it is only a rumor that City Hall insiders knew that the City Manager would be retiring some time soon.
Thanks to Culver City taxpayers, every PERS retirement check for the former City Manager will have been increased by a last-five-years averaging factor that includes that 20 percent going-away bonus.
It is just my opinion but upon his election to City Council, Mr. Malsin appears to have become part of the bureaucratic overhead problem rather than acting like a practical man with budgetary solutions during difficult economic times.
In his three-week series of articles, Mr. Malsin claims that he is all for “financial necessity” being important in budgetary matters.
Was that 20 percent increased executive paycheck a financial necessity?
The executive pay issue is mentioned as a direct contrast to Mr. Malsin recently claiming to be for the “Average Joe” police sergeant or firefighter lieutenant.
Mr. Deen, a CPA, a 20-year Culver City resident, is a former Parks and Recreation Commissioner, a former Fiesta La Ballona Treasurer, and he may be contacted at supercpa@pacbell.net
