A large crowd is expected at tonight’s city council meeting to
protest nearly $100,000 in raises city employees received while 48
of their full-time colleagues lost their jobs Jan. 31.
A large crowd is expected at tonight’s city council meeting to protest nearly $100,000 in raises city employees received while 48 of their full-time colleagues lost their jobs Jan. 31.
A day after The Dispatch reported the raises approved by City Administrator Tom Haglund – which included an $8,000 raise in January for Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips, brining her annual salary including benefits to $171,408 – McPhillips rescinded her raise, according to an e-mail Haglund sent to council members Saturday evening explaining the raises and how halting them would have angered unions.
“Stopping the merit (raise) system is likely to be seen as an unfair labor practice by the labor units, and they could challenge such an action … based on (the city’s) failure to meet and confer on a matter that affects wages,” Haglund wrote, adding that his discretion to dole out pay bumps was based on decades of practice and was also not clearly articulated in the city’s employee handbook, which permits Haglund to consider limited merit-based raises for employees if they receive a recommendation from their department head. Haglund – who is the only employee aside from the clerk and city attorney hired by the council – himself recommends raises for department heads.
“To date, I have not instituted anything new with respect to the city’s payroll practices. I have been following Gilroy’s past practice and have never thought of the issue as purely discretionary on the administrator’s part,” Haglund wrote. “I recognize this may seem like the mere parsing of the language, but these truly are public policy issues that should be considered as a policy shift (to avoid raises) is contemplated, if only to prepare for a challenge.”
Haglund went on to regret “the timing of this” as “particularly difficult.”
