Today, the San Jose City Council could decide to raise their salaries. It’ll be an interesting vote because five of ten councilmembers are likely to be in competitive races for higher offices next year. No candidate likes to accept a raise. I’ve seen polling on this. It’s like putting a stick of dynamite in your pocket and handing your opponent matchsticks.
But, the council is generally underpaid and the overriding goal should be to establish a salary that attracts good people. There are two ways to do this:
1. Pay more—a free-market approach. The more you pay, the more likely you’ll lure talent to your organization. This generally works, unless you’re a Major League Baseball owner in search of quality starting pitching. (link)
2. Pay less—a government-as-civic-duty approach. With the exception of San Jose, all cities in the county have part-time councils. This generally works in smaller communities, unless a private detective is involved. (link)
In San Jose, the mayor’s salary will jump from $105,000 to $122,304 over the next two years. The council will increase from $75,000 to $87,360. The car allowance rises from $350 to $400.
Again, the raises are justified; but the Council Salary Setting Commission’s methodology is weak. It’s not their fault. It’s specified in the city charter that they must compare council salaries to other cities or similar private sector positions. (link)
Rather than this artificial comparison, why not give raises when major city goals are met? In other words: performance-based salaries.
The mayor and council get a pay bump when San Jose has a high bond rating or good police and fire response times. I’d even add harder to measure but important goals like employee morale, customer satisfaction, and public opinion.
Ultimately, this system would be better for the council. To get a raise they would have to cooperatively work toward critical city objectives.
Instead, to get a majority vote today, they will need someone in a tough election next year to decide to carry around electoral dynamite and hope no one lights the fuse.
When the Mayor institutes performance based standards for himself and the Council, and they meet those standards, then they might be able to justify an increase. Until then, an increase would only reward minimal performance and poor leadership.
It is a tough case to make that the quality of individuals has risen as salaries have increased.
We had Al Ruffo, Norm Mineta, Janet Gray Hayes, Tom McEnery, and Susan Hammer at substandard wages. I think Tom got $800 a month.
I’ll leave it for others to discuss if the quality of Governance has improved as the salary increased.
This is not to disparage anyone currently serving in public office. It is simply to point out that most people who choose public service are not motivated by a salary requirement—and some of the most effective public servants did not need it at all.
However, I do believe term limits, ugly campaigns and unreasonable ethics laws have severly limited the gene pool of potential public servants.
Why does the mayor get a car allowance? Didn’t the Merc report that he gets free gas and driver.
Double dipping at the City Hall pump?
To me, $75K and $100K is a lot of money to be paying people who make bad or self-serving decisions that impact the entire community in either the short or long term.
I agree that salaries need to be based on performance. It will take some work figuring out the metrics that should be used and for sure the mayor and council shouldn’t be the ones deciding any of this.
We definitely got ourselves a bargain with Tom in the mayor’s office. On the flip side of that, we’re being ripped off by Gonzo and his team of yes-men/women.
While I sincerely doubt that raising the salaries of our elected officials will generate a higher quality of candidates, I do believe that the current salary amounts are not in-line with the job being performed. Whether the Council votes for the increase or not, they deserve to be compensated appropriately with respect for the positions they hold. The current salaries do not correctly reflect the amount of time spent, the knowledge both needed and acquired, nor the skills that our elected officials have.
Performance based pay is an interesting idea. An independent authority set to define achievable goals is needed for this to work, possibly with public consent on major issues.
Pro bono public service isn’t the kind of representation any of us should want for San Jose, as it would dissuade all but the wealthy or retirees from serving as elected officials. It nevertheless would seem that elected officials have a lot in common with teachers; i.e., the good ones generally get paid far too little while the mediocre ones get paid too much. Unfortunately, more than a few who get voted into office shouldn’t have been (elected, that is) even if they’d agreed to donate their time. Under any circumstances, the salaries cited in Mr. Barry’s piece certainly aren’t out-of-line with the cost-of-living in San Jose, particularly if the incumbents who occupy the positions in question are doing what they should do well and on a full-time basis. What we should all hope for at the end of the day is that we (the taxpayers) get our money’s worth. We will, I believe, if we pay considerably more and far better attention to the choices we have when it comes time to vote.
>The city of San Jose would lay off 78 people, including police officers and firefighters, under the current budget proposal from City Manager Del Borgsdorf.
Borgsdorf released his proposal on Monday afternoon. It closes a $58.1 million deficit by eliminating 140 positions, including those held by 78 current city employees, reducing city services and using reserve funds.
“The proposed budget successfully closes a $58 million shortfall. . .<
Nobody seems concerned about adequately paying those who are laid off.
The only time I hear people talk about adequate compensation is when we talk about those at top of the food chain.
In the private sector, they paid Carly $23 million plus—after she ruined that company and she was on her way out.
Women might note this compensation was only 59% of what they would pay a male CEO for ruining a company of the same size.
Your average city worker doesn’t get a bronze handshake, they get a lay-off notice.
Meanwhile, the City Manager and his nine assistants (who could be replaced in the market place in a nano-second) reap six figures, a car allowance, expenses and help with their housing needs. There doesn’t seem to be a lay-off in site for this group of folks.
Nobody offers a police officer or firerfighter a new house—and who are you going to call in an emergency? I don’t think Del’s number is even listed.
Adequate compensation is relative in this society. Supply and demand for employment purposes is a myth (you can always find someone to do the job for a penny less than the current person due to the surplus of labor).
Those who oppose a livable wage are the first to increase compensation for those at the top. I’d much rather give the folks who do the real work a raise, or at least keep them working, before the folks at the top get an increase.
It’s called shared sacrafice and it’s a concept this society has not quite grasped since before the Reagan era.
Whoah, Jude, performance based raises for the mayor and council? That’s revolutionary. Most would starve, based upon their performance.
Larry Stone has been trying to get performance based pay for his staff for years. No surprise the union rejects the notion. Arnold and others want performance based pay for school teachers. Guess who’s against that? Once again, the union.
But then there are all the high powered CEO’s who make no money for the company, add no value for stockholders, and nevertheless get huge pay and bonuses for bad performance.
What a dilemma for the salary commission and the council.
One way out is to realize that the rank and file have taken hits due to budget constraints; thus the right thing to do would be for the mayor and council to do the same. Perhaps we’d get lucky and the non-performers of our elected officials would just drop out.
Not likely. They love feeding from the public trough.
Did you see DeCinzo’s cartoon in The Willow Glen Resident a week or two ago? The caption was:” The Ron Gonzales Grand Prix Classic”. The cartoon depicted five cars on the starting line, all busted and broken in some manner, that is, non-functional, and named “BART”, “Stem Cell Research”, “Baseball”, “City Hall”, and “Airport”. An incisive and telling cartoon, don’t you agree?
So, with performance based pay, what would Gonzo,our El Alcalde (that’s roughly Spanish for Mayor, for our non-spanish speaking mayor) get on performance based pay? Certainly less than he made last year.
By the way, do we the taxpayers provide gas for his gas guzzling SUV at current prices, or is it a flat rate per month for the petrol?
The difficulty we face is attracting high quality talent to public service at the local level when pay is nowhere near commensurate with the ability of talented people who could earn ten times as much in the private sector for doing an equally abyssmal job.
That is why, after having been a political junkie of sorts for several decades, I no longer have faith in government at any level to do anything but feather the nest of the politicos while screwing the rest of us.
If I thought higher pay would get us better governors (small “G”) I’d embrace it in a heartbeat. But it won’t happen.
John Michael O’Connor
Mayor does double dip, er, pump. He gets free gas in SUV from police car pumps. And he takes monthly check. Don’t think any councilmember does this.
Departments have to do performance based stuff, mostly waste of time. It’s called Investing in Results, but should be called Investing in Reports. That’s all it is.
I just heard on the news that when this pay issue came up for the Council today, Nora Campos made a motion to approve it, with Gonzo’s blessing, and after Gonzo called for a second, there was dead silence. Seems like most members of the Council know where to draw the line. That’s refreshing.
Do Councilmembers still get a per diem for meals on meeting days when there’s a break between the afternoon and evening session? I know at one time they did and I always thought that was an unfair perk that the average lunchbox-carrying San Josean doesn’t get.
We are ready for the red kool-aid!! Krusty ole man.
People who are career politicians will of course be looking for more money and their next spot to land because they are incapable of holding a job in the business world. (I am not naming any names.) After being in the public sector for so long, they are totally out of touch with the “real” world which is why there should be a term limit of all offices that you can hold rather than just the current one you are in.