Is this your city manager's reward?
Today’s OC Register contains a table indicating compensation packages for the city managers in all 34 Orange County cities. However, what the report overlooks is that 12 of the cities contract out police services to the OCSD. As such, they do not have the ongoing duties and responsibility associated with typical police service operations.
Another area overlooked by the Register article is that 22 of the 34 cities are served by the OCFA. Those cities do not have the similar role in terms of fire prevention, equipment and staffing. Of the 8 largest (populated) cities only Irvine contracts out with the OCFA.
The city of Anaheim has around 250 or more employees associated with their fire department. The fire department of the city of Orange has a staff of 136 employees. Newport Beach, another city with its own fire department, has 154 employees.
Without providing details of the dozen cities with their own fire departments I would agree that having that additional oversight responsibility warrants higher compensation for city managers.
My fear is that each of our city managers will now have an easy chart to show their city council’s as they come up for review.
Instead of setting wages and benefits based on unique performance they will simply point out that our peers are getting more than us and perform the same tasks. This results in upward creepage of all at the expense of the local taxpayers. At one time the city of Mission Viejo had unwritten policy that all new hires would be compensated at five percent above the average in an effort to get the cream of the crop.
How have these city managers weathered the current recession?
How many auto dealerships have disappeared?
The same question should be asked regarding big box and mall anchor stores?
How effective have they shown leadership in what watchdogs in Mission Viejo coined a few years ago. Simply stated. “Retain, sustain and gain” business for your community?
What changes have occurred in their General Fund reserve levels?
Without knowing the history of each city I cannot provide an opinion on who is over or underpaid. Case in point. While I believe the compensation package for our neighbor in Laguna Hills is excessive, I tip my hat to their city manager and council for their acquisition of a former bank building which is now their Civic Center and City Hall on El Toro Road that they acquired for around $6 million, if my memory hasn’t failed me.
On the other hand our city manager supported a decision to waste between $300,000 and $400,000 to enter a float in the 2008 Rose Parade along with all the extras including trinkets that were left over after the event ended. We had over a dozen change orders on the expansion of our Murray Community and Senior Center that was originally to cost $3.5 million and ended up around $15.5 million. That lack of project cost control and oversight should not be rewarded.
The chart show Dennis Wilberg getting over $250,000 per year. In his last Contract Amendment, approved by the Council Majority on Feb 1st, they rewrote the clause on misconduct, which was defined as “dishonesty, fraud, self-dealing or willful misconduct.” It was replaced and redefined to only include misappropriation of funds or being convicted of a felony (involving “moral turpitude”). If he is terminated for reasons other than misconduct we must give him a lump sum severance payment of 9 months plus health care. Don’t get me started on the Mission Viejo City manager where I might be somewhat biased.
While I commend the grad students for their city manager compensation report, investigative reporting requires peeling an onion which generally brings tears to our eyes.
Note: The staffing data for fire departments in Anaheim, Orange and Newport Beach has not been verified. I obtained it from various web sites
I’d commend the real estate agent in Laguna Hills that was paying attention and sold the City on that building.
Why are not these jobs put to bid? let new fresh MBA’s bid on these jobs and lower the over all costs. And should these jobs have timelimits of not more than 6 to 8 years and then move on the another fresh newbie?
Cook. Good afternoon.
As I await the Laker-Sun tipoff can you clarify your comment. What projects are you referring to?
Don’t forget that most of these men have “evergreen” contracts which can run for up to 3 years. Did the survey include that information? It’s important because in the case of Laguna Hills it might cost them $1.5 million to show him the door! Nice work if you can get it.
I find compensation packages like this in the public sector to lag behind those in comparable positions in the private sector. Packages (including bonuses) totaling half a million or more a year are not uncommon at the VP/COO/CFO level in the private sector, much less the CEO (top) positions. I suspect that it is likely quite a few who live in Laguna Niguel are making that much.
Top management.
Setting Wall Street players aside, most CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies cannot be benchmarked against city manager’s who do not produce a product or provide a service.
When the city of Laguna Hills, [with 33,000 residents,] has 27 full time employees, their City Manager’s compensation package cannot be justified. PERIOD!
That’s a no brainer.
Larry, your logic leads to the tragic message of “if you want more pay in the public sector, add employees to your body count!”. I prefer to look at the magnitude of fiscal responsibility coupled with City Council and resident satisfaction with performance. A city manager and Council that strongly favors contracting out should be recognized and rewarded in my book, not punished because their municipality has fewer employees than another city of similar population size. That aside, the level of compensation for this City Manager does, subjectively, seem a little askew in the field of cities in OC. Maybe it is time to look at the need for more than 30 cities in OC, with their duplicate political and administrative structures if one is truly looking for conserving taxpayer funds. For starters, do we really need a seperate Laguna Niguel and Aliso Viejo, for instance? Or Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita? Mergers-consolidations anyone?
Top Management.
To the best of my knowledge you do not know my history. I have been a strong opponent of the growth of our city staffing. A case can be made when your city elects to have its own fire and police department and all the support staff necessary to provide that public safety.
As to the need for new cities. Ladera Ranch and Las Flores were in our LAFCO “sphere of influence.” While the county would love to offload those unincorporated areas, we did our homework and decided that neither of them penciled out for annexation. I sitll have that consultant’s analysis.
At one council meeting many years ago a former city council was giving our departing city manager a final increase in his compenasation package. I contacted SAC and spoke to someone in the governors office to benchmark his overall staffing numbers as well as his duties and responsibilities. I Than compared Pete Wilson’s compensation against our city manager. Pete had just taken a pay cut that put his compensation equal to or below what we were proposing. Hearing my Agenda remarks the city manager asked that council to drop the pending increase.
My only point is that I am keeping my eye on all aspects of city government and corresponding expenditures.
I like Cooke’s idea: that city manager’s put in bids for the job for an 8 year contract with a 2 year extension. If the manager has under-performed, the manager is gone – no severance pay, and the city goes out for another RFP performance contract.
Also, unlike the Mission Viejo contract for Manager Dennis Wilburg, the contract will contain a misconduct clause that does include dishonesty, fraud, self-dealing or willful misconduct as cause for termination, as well as a residency requirement.
Larry,
None of these contracts have “Evergreen” clauses like those found in trash and cable franchise contracts. Instead they have “termination with cause” clauses that require payouts. Councils can give usually 6 months notice prior to end of contract period that it will not be renewed and avoid any costs. Most don’t because councils only fire when some huge error has occurred or the Manager is hunting for a better job. If notice is not given a 6 or 12 month “cooling” off period is common before job action can be taken.
All city manager jobs are posted publicly and advertised pretty widely. Included are local papers, trade magazines and public job boards. That said it is usually a 6-9 month process to recruit a qualified city manager, quite an expensive process.
OC is a pretty stable CM market, but on the whole CM’s stick around only 3-4 years. Finally, I’ve always argued that CM’s should not be compared with private corporate leaders. More appropriately would be non-profit corporation leaders. Like non-profits Cities should be revenue neutral and only grow to the size of community requirements. When the requirements are reduced the organization should shrink accordingly, unfortunately a rare occurrence in local government.
As for the idea to hire a “fresh” mba, its been tried and failed miserably by several cities. A CM needs to understand so many rules and regulations in dealing with City, County, State and Federal Laws. A city cannot afford to make mistakes in filings or reporting requirements that could cost the city millions in support, penalties or loss of recovery of project costs. The job does require specialized skills and training, just don’t think it merits the numbers we are seeing in the OC!
Interesting to note that the big spending cities are dominated by “conservative” majority councils. These salaries don’t seem too “conservative” to me! just…asking?
Bottom line, Larry Gilbert does his homework, the Register does not.
The Register apparently doesn’t read its own archives. The Register opposed the Yorba Linda voter initiative in 2006, which voters indeed approved. None of the disastrous economic and social consequences happened, as Yorba Linda remains a successful, low density community.
But the Register recommends against Measure D in Mission Viejo on June 8, which is virtually identical to the Yorba Linda wording. The Register goes further by endorsing the Mission Viejo City Council’s breach of environmental standards, like waiving an environmental impact report for a parking lot project which requires 4000 truckloads of direct compacted into an environmental sensitive, sloping area. By its comments the Register also endorses the MV council’s efforts to waive parking space requirements for major projects, like cutting parking spaces for redeveloping a shopping center at quadruple density. The city said it would deal with parking later. The project, fortunately, never got off the ground.
Neither has the Register’s pathetic attempts to stop its slide in circulation.
Allan
allan. While I support and have recommended the Mission Viejo “Right to Vote” Measure D this post is not about that issue or the June election.
If you have any specific comments, pro or con, regarding the Register coverage of city manager compensation or this post please do so. One of the rules of the Juice blog is to stay on topic.
Thank you!
I have a friend who works in Santa Ana. I remember her explaining to me (I work in the Public Employee field) that the S.A. manager does have an Evergreen contract and that if the S.A. council does not take action on a certain day in March it automatically rolls over for three more years. If they do give him notice, they owe him 3 years pay. Not many councils could stomach a 3 year payoff (A million dollars) to ask him to leave. I’ve heard that many school Supervisors have the same. I believe they coach them on how to get these sweet contracts at their annual meeting in Monterey. (paid for my taxpayers)
Education First.
The Register, and yours truly, have just opened pandora’s box. Now every city manager at the lower end of the compensation spectrum will tell their councils that they are under compensated.
Education First,
You need to find more well informed friends! All the contracts have some termination period to end contract without cause. Most are 90 or 180 days, none that I’ve reviewed are more than 360 days. And that one is covered by employment insurance if the CM doesn’t get a new job. But money is not paid out lump sum, the CM has to sit and wait for payments as if working.
A glaring flaw with the system is the very people who deal with these issues and manage the contracts for cities all report to the CM, so whose interest do you think they are looking out for? The Taxpayers? Their bosses? just…asking?