City Manager's Pay Raise: To late to complain, you have had plenty of chances.

What happened last night, in awarding the city manager with a $40k pay increase, is our local government followed the established rules for awarding pay increases.  That the public now, after the fact, feels that the increase was out of touch with the local economy. A little too late if you ask me.

This is what you get when you have an electorate who can best be described as passive.  You get politicians who are not looking out for you, the taxpayer, constituent, but are looking for the easy way out in the deal making process that is governance in these United States.  An example of this is that not one council person voted against this raise.  I am not saying the raise was too much or too little, that is not the point here.  What I am saying is there was no, none, nada, descent among the council.  All seven representatives agreed that the raise was appropriate and commensurate with the duties of city manager for the City of Laredo.   The easy way out.

Our city council is not held to any standards by the community.  Don't believe me.  Ask yourself this question, and be honest:  Did I do everything I could to find out what the city council candidate I was voting for planned on doing when they got into office?  Did I know how the candidate I was voting for would represent me on different issues?  Did I demand a debate between candidates, and did I participate?  If you answered no to all these questions, then you are the problem, not the person who voted for the raise.

If our city council persons can pull the wool over the eyes of just enough people to get elected to their seat, which is not very many given the size of this city, we will never have any better governance than we have now.

You ask how a city council can give a city manager a 21% increase in pay?  Well, how can a city council allow the police and fire unions to run the police and fire departments.  How can we as a city spend over 60% of our budget on fire and police protection?  How can we allow our roads to be half completed?  How can we allow our water and sewer lines to deteriorate to where they are today?   How can we allow bid rigging?  How can we allow a person who wishes to file an ethics complaint be intimidated by the city's website?  How can we allow city council persons be allocated a "discretionary" (sluch) fund of millions of dollars to use how they deem fit in their districts (of course the expenditures are voted on by the whole council, but it is just a cursory vote)?   I am sure you can come up with a list of statements about the city that you can preface with the words, "How can we allow a city council that.......(fill in the blanks).

I will tell you how we let this happen.  Only a few people pay attention to politics when it is election time.  Then they forget about politics until something drastic comes up, like this raise.  Yet, if you followed the council and knew what they were doing full time, you would not be surprised when these type of events happen. We, with a few exceptions, ever write letters to the editor to complain about these types of issues.  Maybe that has something to do with fear of reprisal.  But still is no excuse in a democratic republic.  We have low expectations of our politicians.  We never ask them to excel.  We only ask that they do what we want done for us personally, after that, we lose interest.

You may be saying that the city council will not change, the city manager will not change, and there is nothing I can do that will fix any of this.  Well I say you are wrong.  You must stand up for what you believe and let people know how you feel on an issue.  Write that letter to the editor, call the television station you get your news from and let them know how you feel.  Check out the local alternative media, blogs, websites, talk shows and let them know how you feel.

But most important, you must let your council person know how you feel.  You can call or email them.  Their cell phone numbers and individual emails are listed on the City of Laredo webpage.

PS:  A 21 percent pay increase given that our city leadership has been cutting third party funding, and complaining about lack of funds to do this and that, is out of line with our financial climate.  And especially since the non-union employees got such a small wage increase.

Secondly, the methodology is lacking in the way the salary was arrived at.  In order to do an apple to apples comparison of wages, you need to look at the following:

1. Talent availability
2. When comparing city to city, you must look at ( and not limited to):
1. population
2. $ amount of budget
3. median family income 
3. Any specialized requirements for the position of manager, ie, bilingual, specific degree, specific knowledge requirements, etc.

Once you compare these things that a city requires and consist of, then you can look a comparing city A with city B and so fourth.  Any one of the listed items alone does not give you a true comparison, but in quantity they do.