From the inbox

The following arrived in our inbox several times overnight:

Citizens for Appropriate Mayoral Compensation

Somewhere the question arose. And now it is moving thru out the City,” Why are we paying Mayor Mack so much, to do so little?” People are saying that he is excessively over paid. His results are simply not worth the $126,460, annual salary we pay him.

A committee of citizens in favor of appropriate mayoral compensation has formed. Their goal is to build citizen support to move City Council to enact an ordinance reducing Mayor Mack’s compensation to an amount more appropriate for his disappointing level of performance.

Upon taking office, Tony Mack fired every Director in the City administration. He then proceeded to appoint family and friends with little or no experience to these leadership positions: Hardly meritorious performance on his part.

After cooperatively approving his initial appointments against their better judgment, City Council refused to continue approving ill chosen new appointments to those same positions. Tony Mack side-stepped the permanent appointment process by using Acting Director status appointments. We are almost half way thru Mack’s four year term of office. And we have Acting Directors, open positions: Scandalous time keeping for pay purposes, and incompetent employees in many positions. This is not why we pay Tony Mack $126,000 a year.

City Council needs to pass a new ordinance reducing his honor’s pay to something like $80,000 a year, or less. Here is the ordinance.

AN ORDINANCE TO FIX THE COMPENSATION FOR THE OFFICE OF MAYOR,

PROVIDING FOR THE PUBLICATION OF COMPENSATION ORDINANCES FOR

CERTAIN OFFICERS AND REPEALING ORDINANCES INCONSISTENT HEREWITH.

WHEREAS, pursuant to the provisions of the Faulkner Act, N.J.S.A.

40:69A-43a.,40:69A-180 and general municipal law, N.J.S.A. 40A:9-

165, the power to fix the compensation for the offices of Mayor,

City Clerk, Business Administrator, Department Directors, and

City Council Members is required to be exercised by the adoption

of an ordinance; and

WHEREAS the City Council finds that it is in the public interest

That the compensation of the office of Mayor be adjusted and

Fixed at an amount commensurate with the current economic

Circumstances of the City of Trenton and that it and all other

Compensation ordinances shall be restored to published status

along with all published ordinances of the City of Trenton and be

readily accessible by the public; now therefore, be it

ORDAINED by the City Council of the City of Trenton as Follows:

1. Effective January 1, 2012, the annual monetary

compensation for the office of the Mayor shall be $80,000.00.

2. Any other provision of the Administrative Code or other

ordinance or instrument which provides for any monetary

compensation other than the amount of money set forth in Section

1. above or is otherwise inconsistent with the provisions of this

ordinance is hereby abrogated, repealed and superseded to the

extent of such inconsistency.

3. The City Clerk is hereby directed to provide for the

inclusion of the foregoing amendment of the Administrative Code

to become published along with the other published portions of

the City of Trenton Ordinances along with any and all future

revisions thereof and to respond to public inquiry with regard

thereto without requiring the formality of a written request for

access to public information.

4. Effective Date. An emergency having been declared with

respect to the effective date of hereof, this ordinance shall

become effective upon final approval and publication.

If you agree that Mayor Mack is over-paid, you should e-mail your Council Person and tell him to introduce and vote for this ordinance. Send your e-mail to Linda Kelsey, Council Aid,

lkelsey@trentonnj.org , and ask her to distribute it to each Council member.

You should also call your Council person and urge him to introduce and vote for this ordinance. All of them can be reached at their office telephone, 609-989-3146 .

And finally, you need to attend City Council meetings and ask them to introduce and pass this ordinance.

Please plan to attend the next Council meeting Thursday, February 16, at 5:30. If each of you do that, Council will be compelled to do your will, and will enact this ordinance. Then the Mayor will be paid a salary more appropriate for his level of performance in these poor economic times.

Please feel free to share this wonderful request with your friends and relatives. Encourage them to make a difference by joining this effort for more appropriate Mayoral compensation.

From your committee of Citizens for Appropriate Mayoral Compensation.

Check please!

A little history of the salary mess in Trenton

In August of 2003, the Palmer administration put ordinances on the city council docket increasing the salary ranges for the Mayor and department heads, the city clerk and increasing the city council pay.  It was a sneaky, distasteful move on a couple of counts.

First, earlier that year, the same administration had asked department heads to cut budgets by 10% or so because of the city’s financial condition. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to cut budgets and then turnaround and grant the king’s court raises, does it?

Second, the ordinances were late additions to the docket of the single council meeting held in August.  This meant the second reading/approval would come at the first meeting in September. Coming at the end of summer when people are away on vacation and right after the Labor Day holiday when so many families are readjusting to a more regulated fall schedule, the timing of the introduction of these ordinances was obviously designed to circumvent public scrutiny and outcry.

Didn’t work. Various watchdogs, activists, etc. got wind of the ordinance’s first reading and spoke against it.  At the second reading in September of that year, a decent crowd turned out and spoke against the raises during the public hearing that proceeded the vote on the ordinances.

It was testy. Then Council President Paul Pintella was about to have one citizen removed from chambers but the speaker left of his own volition.  Another resident brought a tube of KY Jelly to the podium and asked that council at least use a lubricant before “putting it to the citizens”.  

The ordinances passed.

Another interesting development was that the ordinances for the Mayor, department heads and city clerk denoted salary ranges with annual increases over a several year period.  While not specifically prohibited, state statue does not mention salary ranges. It simply states “salaries, wages or compensation”.

§ 40A:9-165. Salaries, wages or compensation of mayor or other chief executive; officers and employees; exceptions; referendum

The governing body of a municipality, by ordinance, unless otherwise provided by law, shall fix and determine the salaries, wages or compensation to be paid to the officers and employees of the municipality, including the members of the governing body and the mayor or other chief executive, who by law are entitled to salaries, wages, or compensation.

Salaries, wages or compensation fixed and determined by ordinance may, from time to time, be increased, decreased or altered by ordinance. No such ordinance shall reduce the salary of, or deny without good cause an increase in salary given to all other municipal officers and employees to, any tax assessor, chief financial officer, tax collector or municipal clerk during the term for which he shall have been appointed. Except with respect to an ordinance or a portion thereof fixing salaries, wages or compensation of elective officials or any managerial, executive or confidential employee as defined in section 3 of the "New Jersey Employer-Employee Relations Act" P.L.1941, c.100 (C.34:13A-3), as amended, the ordinance shall take effect as provided therein. In municipalities wherein the provisions of Title 11 (Civil Service) of the Revised Statutes are in operation, this section shall be subject thereto.

Where any such ordinance shall provide for increases in salaries, wages or compensation of elective officials or any managerial, executive or confidential employee, the ordinance or that portion thereof which provides an increase for such elective or appointive officials shall become operative in 20 days after the publication thereof, after final passage, unless within said 20 days, a petition signed by voters of such municipality, equal in number to at least 5% of the registered voters of the municipality, protesting against the passage of such ordinance, be presented to the governing body, in which case such ordinance shall remain inoperative unless and until a proposition for the ratification thereof shall be adopted at an election by a majority of the voters voting on said proposition. The question shall be submitted at the next general election, occurring not less than 40 days from the date of the certification of the petition. The submission of the question to the voters shall be governed by the provisions of Title 19 (Elections) of the Revised Statutes, as in the case of public questions to be voted upon in a single municipality.

Not only were salary ranges and automatic, annual increases built in, Mayor Palmer chose to pay himself and his staff at the top of those ranges. Consistently.  The argument was made that when you have ranges, the average, qualified, competent employee should be paid at the midpoint of the range.  Someone with less than spectacular performance or a lack of experience would be paid in the lower part of the range; someone who excels at the job might expect to be paid at the higher end.  That’s common sense and good business.

The Palmer administration had no part of that. They argued that the cabinet members were all doing excellent work and must be paid as much as possible because many of the unionized employees they managed were making the same or more money.  Apparently there is some unwritten law that states the boss must make more than the employee.  And that argument was extended all the way up to the mayor.  If you inflate the department head salaries, then of course you have to raise the mayor’s. 

 To say the public was unhappy…or at least those who were paying attention…would be an understatement.

Flash forward to 2008. Not wanting to go through the hassle of having to explain the raises again, the Palmer administration illegally snuck them through via some vague language tacked onto the ratification of union contracts by city council.  It took a citizen to file a legal complaint against the city and a judge’s order to throw out those raises.  Of course, no one had to pay back the money they gained through the illegal raises.

That brings us to July 2010. Mayor Mack is sworn in and starts paying himself and his cabinet at the same rate, the top of the 2008 ranges that Palmer and company got.  Mack did this knowing the city was on the precipice of financial failure.  Mack did this while facing layoffs yet simultaneously going on a hiring spree, bringing in cronies and aides and interns and such.  Only because the ruling came down in August and was applied to the current administration did the pay scale get rolled back to the 2005 levels; the last legally passed pay raises.

A sympathetic, sentient Mayor would realize that a city with major financial issues, a city that must layoff hundreds of employees including 1/3 of the police department, can not afford to raise his salary or that of his cabinet.  Unfortunately for Trenton, Mayor Mack is neither sympathetic nor sentient.

Mayor Mack is a failed city leader. Eighteen months into his term, he has demonstrated no plan for improving public safety or economic development. He has demonstrated, repeatedly, an incredible lack of ability or will to do anything except hire and reward his friends while the city falls further and further into despair and disrepair.

Last night a very clear and strong message was sent to the mayor via the public comments at the city council meeting.  The people will not reward the continued incompetence of this administration with even the mere consideration of raising the mayor’s salary.

Six months into the Tony Mack Experience Trenton is still fumbling along.

Six months in and the city still doesn’t have a Business Administrator.

Six months in and the city council has yet to set salaries for the Mayor and his cabinet.

Six months in there are 61 firefighters still hanging by a thread wondering if and when they will be laid off.

Six months in and the dust has not yet settled on the rest of the city workforce: will there be more layoffs, pay cuts, furlough days?

Six months in and we have had two major problems with the Trenton Water Works that many fought so hard to keep intact as a city asset. Besides the “brown water” situation of early October and the Prosecutor’s raid on the department in December, there have been accusations of possible contamination at one of the system’s water tanks and cries for state or regional takeover of the utility.

Six months in and the administration is still tripping over the strings attached to the state aid handed out just before Thanksgiving. This time, it was the failure to clear appointments with the Department of Community Affairs before bringing them to city council…again.

Six months in and there is no real budget on the table and in the process of refinement and approval.

Six months in and there is little reason to expect anything to change in the next six months.

Six months into the Tony Mack Experience Trenton is still fumbling along.