(Not) everything you ever wanted to know about the City Manager’s salary (but were too polite to ask.)

On this week’s Agenda, in the Consent Agenda, will be an item to give the City Manager a 5% increase.

My initial reactions upon reading this weeks’ package were:

• Such an item should never be in the Consent Agenda, which should only be for items that are truly routine. And regardless of one’s feelings on the matter, this is a decidedly non-routine item.
• The background language for the item is…

The City Council has been provided the opportunity to complete a formal written performance evaluation. Based on the outcome of this performance evaluation, the City Council can consider approving a 5% pay increase consistent with the an annual increase percentage that eligible staff members may receive upon a successful performance evaluation.

As me gran might say, “I feel so honoured!” 😀

Some history…

2014

Mr. Matthias was hired in 2014 as both Economic Development Director and Assistant City Manager.

2016

In January, Mr. Matthias’ predecessor, Tony Piasecki, announced he would retire that August to coincide with his 20 years of service.

Despite what you may have heard, Mr. Piasecki did not ‘blindside’ anyone. He, in fact, conducted a very deliberate transition process, including preparing a number of documents to help forward his institutional knowledge to both his successor and the Council. He

As part of that transition, as early as April, Mr. Matthias was given control of the final budget process, which made punters think he was the designated successor.

An independent firm was hired to do a selection process and Mr. Matthias put his hat in the ring. The top three were brought in for meetings with the previous version of the Citizens Advisory Committee. Mr. Matthias was ranked fourth by the search firm, but for some reason was also included in those CAC interviews.

The top selection, by both the search firm and the CAC was offered the job. Mayor Pina called him to offer congratulations. But shortly thereafter, the winning applicant called back to say that he had changed his mind.

The Council met to discuss the situation. They could offer the job to the other top candidates or begin a new search process, with the possibility of leaving the CM slot temporarily open. Instead, they offered the job to Mr. Matthias, on an Interim basis, which he accepted at his existing salary of $153,000. He continued on as EDD.

2017

After a sort of trial period, in 2017 the ‘Interim’ was dropped. Mr. Matthias retained the dual role of City Manager and EDD and did not appoint an Assistant City Manager.

From that point on he has been given a series of fairly large raises because the Council felt he had been initially sort of ‘short-changed’ and partly because he was doing ‘double duty’–and best-in-class double duty at that.

2020

I joined the Council in January, 2020 and the question of his raise that year was indeed a full agenda discussion, with the full contact and pay increase from January 23, 2020 City Council Packet. It was one of the most informative discussions in my time on the Council and I urge everyone to watch it.

During that vote, there were two motions worthy of note.

• That was the last meeting of Vic Pennington who (surprise!), from the dais, offered a motion to extend Mr. Matthias’ severance package from six to eighteen months of pay should the Council choose to terminate his contract. Essentially a poison pill. His quote I remember most was:

“If we lose (Michael Matthias) we lose this City.”

• Traci Buxton made a motion to change the review process from twice a year to once. That was actually voted down.  Because Mr. Matthias’ contract does specify not one but two reviews every year.

(Note that the Mayor soon thereafter announced he was changing parliamentary procedure to prevent such motions.)

And… in my three years on the Council we have never done that second (mid-year) review. Why? Because neither Mayor Pina or Mayor Mahoney has The Mayor simply doesn’t put the mid-year one on the agenda. And I mention this because that is the abuse of power people don’t see…

2021

At the beginning of 2021, Mr. Matthias announced he would not ask for a raise during 2021.

However, in December 2021 we voted to go up to Step E–another 5%. And again, by far the most enthusiastic speech in support came from Councilmember Buxton.

Here is coverage from the Waterland Blog.

2022

The City Manager provides an annual City Manager Performance Accomplishments document.

There is then a written performance review which all seven CMs fill out.

Now in the past, we all saw each other’s reviews before the meeting. That stopped this year. This year we had to read them during the review.

But to give you a sense of what they’re like, here’s the 2021 Written Performance Review.

What you’ve all been waiting for…

Mr. Matthias’ current salary is about $236,000 plus over $20k in various benefits. The proposed raise would add $13.5k and bring the base salary to basically $250k.

The blunt instrument…

For what it’s worth: I have had and continue to have many issues with Mr. Matthias performance, but that package was never one of them. If I thought the performance was as good as my colleagues, I would have no problem with that dollar amount.

But it’s not.

So I vote against these raises for the same reason many people of conscience vote against various taxes. Sometimes, it’s not about the money. Sometimes, voting no is the only way to say “Enough.”

It’s a blunt instrument. You’d much rather have a scalpel, but sometimes a hammer is all you’ve got.