The city council is expected to approve $15,000 in raises for
the city administrator and clerk Monday night during a hastily
scheduled special meeting.
The city council is expected to approve $15,000 in raises for the city administrator and clerk Monday night during a hastily scheduled special meeting.
Council members – who cut more than $11 million from the general fund over the last year, including through 48 full-time layoffs in January – would not say how they planned to vote before they hear from residents Monday night. Monday’s meeting was originally scheduled as a study session to consider an unrelated topic, but Mayor Al Pinheiro turned it into a special meeting – which allows the council to take action – two weeks ago while meeting with City Clerk Shawna Freels and City Administrator Tom Haglund.
The three met to discuss the council’s Sept. 21 agenda and expected to put the raises up for a vote in that meeting, Pinheiro said. However, they realized the raise vote couldn’t occur then because a council sub-committee consisting of the mayor and Council members Dion Bracco and Cat Tucker had yet to offer a formal, public recommendation on the raises.
However, this same subcommittee made an informal recommendation to council in an Aug. 3 closed session that led the council to vote 4-3 to offer a $4,700 raise to Freels – who earns $94,906 – and vote 6-1 to offer a nearly $10,000 raise to Haglund – who earns $199,000 – according to a city official who requested anonymity. The pay hikes represent about a 5 percent raise, but both employees currently earn about 10 percent less than their scheduled salary due to furloughs.
However, council members refused to say how they would vote Monday, and stressed that they might have changed their minds since August.
“All the recommendation is saying is that it would be fair to give (Freels and Haglund) raises because that’s what everybody else got. But with that said, these two are not everybody else. They’re at the top, and I do believe leadership starts at the top,” Bracco said. “We’ll see where this goes Monday night.”
Pinheiro also would not say how he will vote.
“No way Jose,” he said. “It would be premature because we want to have an opportunity for the item to be discussed in public.”
The sub-committee, led by Pinheiro, spent the last few months considering individual council members’ thoughts on Freels and Haglund while Pinheiro conferred with the two employees privately.
Haglund did not return messages Thursday asking whether he would accept a raise, and Freels declined to speak.
“Anyone who’s getting a pay raise should keep that between them and their employer,” Freels said. “I’m just not that comfortable saying anything at this point.”
Pinheiro stressed there was no conflict of interest in his discussion with Freels and Haglund about calling the special meeting, which Councilman Perry Woodward will miss due to business. Woodward said he has asked the mayor to reschedule Wednesday, and the mayor said Thursday he would contact Woodward.
Council members and residents expressed concern with the fact that the special meeting does not coincide with a regular council meeting might mean less public comment.
“This just raises some concerns about whether the public is going to be used to this scheduling,” Councilman Craig Gartman said.
The next regular meeting is Oct. 5.
“This was supposed to happen Sept. 21, so instead of waiting even longer, and because we were going to meet anyway for the study session, I figured, well, why not stay a little longer (after the study session) and take care of this,” Pinheiro said. “(Haglund, Freels and I) thought it was a good idea because it gives the discussion more time. It doesn’t matter to them whether this happens next week or the week after.”
Woodward chalked it all up to a simple scheduling conflict and said he did not believe the mayor was “trying to pull a fast one.”
The city’s various union representatives have generally supported the raises, saying they are in line with raises every other city employee received last fiscal year. However, Fire Local 2805 Representative Jim Buessing and other employees questioned the “ease or unease” with which some staff received raises “may be upsetting to others” who belong to unions that had to battle to restore their merit raises.
The council froze annual merit raises for all employees in March, after layoffs, but three months later the body approved contracts with the city’s five bargaining units – which do not include Haglund or Freels because they are Gilroy’s only two council-appointed employees – that restored merit raises for the 2008-09 fiscal year that ended June 30.
All unions agreed to forego raises during FY09-10. Freels’ and Haglund’s raises would stem from their yearly performance evaluations left over from January and May, respectively.
Woodward also asked the mayor to reschedule the special meeting because of the other issue to be discussed – an analysis of the city’s contracted law firm, Berliner Cohen, and the services and fees it charges compared to other cities that employ in-house counsels. Woodward originally brought up the issue and pushed for council to consider it.
“I think it would be kind of useless to have the study session without (Woodward) there because he’s the one who brought it up,” Bracco said. “I’m just surprised by this special meeting. We could just wait until the next meeting.”
