Arithmetic, actually. It’s not that difficult, at all.
This morning, the Trenton Times printed an article by Cristina Rojas on the current effort to overturn Ordinance #16-50. Council passed this Ordinance, as well as Resolution #16-591 which the Ordinance authorized, on October 20. This Ordinance created salary ranges for Trenton’s Mayor Eric Jackson as well as its Business Administrator, Chief of Staff, Municipal Judges, and Department and Division Directors. Within those ranges, the Resolution set specific salaries for most all these officials (excepting the Chief of Staff, whose salary can be set by the Mayor directly).
Those salaries are 3% higher than their current salaries. These raises will be retroactively calculated to January 1, 2016. They won’t become effective until 20 days after the Council passage of these measures. That would be November 9.One more point: this action has been taken well before we have an approved Annual Budget for the Fiscal Year that began on July 1 of this year and runs until June 30, 2017. So we don’t even know what the impact of these raises will be to the City’s finances.
You follow so far? Good.
The Jackson Administration’s first proposal was presented to Council as a 15% raise over three years. City Council, of course, passed this original plan on its First Reading by a vote of 5-1 on August 18.
But then again, our City Council is a little dense sometimes.
After Council passed the first reading of this plan, after a very shallow examination of the plan and no budgetary analysis of this plan at all ( I was there, I know!) , there was a great deal of public pushback from several Trentonians, including myself. Pushback that included the formation of a citizens committee to, should the proposal have passed, lead a petition drive to force a public referendum to overturn the raises.
After a few weeks of criticism, Mayor Jackson “clarified” his plan. There was a lot of “confusion ” about it, according to the Mayor. There was “no way in heck” he meant 15% increases. Heavens, no! “”I would never do that.”
Except that his own Business Administrator Terry McEwen had done exactly that. On August 18 he explained to Council on August 19 that exact proposal.
Well, after the Mayor threw Mr. McEwen under the bus, his Administration came back with what they publicized as a more reasonable, a more “modest” proposal. This would be nothing more than a cost of living increase, of 1.5% a year for this budget year and the last one, calculated to be retroactive to January 1, 2016.
Certainly this revised plan sounded much more reasonable to Council., who rubber-stamped, umm, approved, it on October 20 (In order to avoid any political fallout from their vote, however, they removed their own raises from the plan. That’s ok. We’ll remember anyway).
We still oppose this plan.
On September 16, when Council was first scheduled to vote on the proposal (they postponed action to October), I spoke to Council on behalf of the citizens committee. I said that we had no problem with the principle of raises for all of these officials, as long as they were fair and equitable. I concluded those comments this way:
Be assured, we will support such a fair and equitable plan – one that provides only Cost-of-living adjustments, is considered as part of the approved Annual Budget, and which only goes forward from the date of adoption of that Budget, providing for no retroactive payments. We will oppose a plan that does not do these things.
The plan as passed by Council does not fit those criteria, and so we continue to oppose it, and are circulating a petition to repeal Ordinance 16-50. That’s what Ms., Rojas was reporting in today’s Trenton Times.
We seem to have pressed a few of the Administration’s buttons with this opposition, because the Mayor released a statement today intended to defend, again, the “modest” nature of this plan. Unfortunately, the Mayor (or his spokesperson Michael Walker, whose name is also on the statement) and his Administration seem to still be as confused as they admitted to being last month. Because today’s Statement reveals a lack of understanding of municipal accounting, and even of arithmetic.
The statement is very brief. It’s worth posting in its entirety.
Here the Mayor states that this is a “one-time three percent increase for 2016.” He continues to justify this as a 1.5% increase for Fiscal Year 2015 and 1.5% for FY 2016. This is all it is, according to the Mayor. Increases for the fiscal budget year we are currently in, 2017, and 2018 “must be presented via resolution to City Council for its approval.” This will be an action that can be taken at a later time, presumably. The Mayor is reserving the right to propose yet further increases in this current fiscal year, since these raises only go to December 31, 2016. There’s still six months of budget year to go at that point, remember. What would be so wrong with another 1.5%, or even more?
You still follow? It sure sounds simple, right? What’s the problem? I’ll tell what the problem is. And I will warn you, it’s an important point., so I will yell.
THE CITY CAN’T COUNT THIS AS INCREASES FOR FISCAL YEARS 2015 AND 2016!
ALL OF THOSE YEARS ARE LONG PAST, AND THE BUDGET BOOKS CLOSED.
ALL OF THE INCREASES WILL COUNT IN THIS YEAR, 2017, AND NEXT YEAR 2018. THE INCREASES ARE MORE THAN 1.5% PER YEAR.
THEY COME TO 4.5% THIS YEAR, AT LEAST. AND THAT IS EVEN BEFORE ANY FURTHER INCREASES THAT MAY BE PLANNED, ACCORDING TO THE MAYOR’S OWN WORDS!!!
Whew. Sorry for the shouting. But I wanted to make sure that I got this point across. When the Mayor (or Mr. Walker) say they are calculating this increase against two old fiscal years, he is either greatly confused, or HE IS LYING!
Sorry, did it again!
Back in August, when Council first discussed it, in the one -and only! – discussion of how this might affect the City’s budget, North Ward Councilmember Marge Caldwell-Wilson had the following brief exchange with Business Administrator McEwen. These quotes have been transcribed by me, from the audio recording of the August 18 meeting made by the City Clerk’s Office. The numbers before each quote indicate the timestamp of when the comments were made during the meeting. Comments in [brackets] are mine.
2:52:40 Caldwell-Wilson: This is based on doing retroactive [to January 1, 2016, in the prior FY 2016]. So in the last budget [FY 2016], I don’t recall us being apprised that there was money put into the budget to cover the retroactive salaries.
2:52:54 McEwen: We put it in this year’s budget [FY 2016/17], because it’s retroactive in this year. So it’ll still be in this year’s budget.
2:53:00 C-W: But I don’t recall, we had temporary budgets, we’re just now putting this in?
2:53:03 McE: We would if this is approved.
There you have it. The City’s BA admits these payments will all be in THIS YEAR’S BUDGET, WHICH WE DON’T CURRENTLY HAVE
Dang! Still yelling!
Anyway, Mr. McEwen admitted to Council that the fiction that Mayor Jackson continues to tell us – up to and including today – about “1.5% in FY 2015 and 1.5% in 2016” is Bullshit. And, I believe, that is even the proper Accounting Terminology for that.
Another aspect of this: the impact to this year’s budget will not be the 3% the Mayor is telling us. It is going to be 4.5%, at least.
How does that work? Although the Salary Resolution sets the salaries as being in effect from only January 1 to December 31, 2016, these salaries will remain in effect beyond that date, unless there are further increases, as I will describe below.
So, these individuals will enjoy a 3% increase – at least – for the 12 months of the fiscal year July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2017. Since this Resolution is retroactive to January 1 of this year, they will be paid a 3% increase for an additional six months! Therefore, an effective increase of 4.5%, all chargeable to this current year!
Let me quickly illustrate, using Mayor Jackson’s own salary.
His current (before the raise) salary is $126,460 per year. His new salary will be $130,253. That’s an increase of $3,793. Three Percent. Yep. That’s what he will get for the current budget year from July 1 to next June 30. But, the new salary is retroactive to January 1 of this year, so he will receive an additional bump of around $1,897 for that six-month period of time.
That makes his total increase $3,793 + $1,897, or $5,690. That’s eighteen months of raise to be paid over 12 months, or an actual, effective raise of 4.5% over his current $126,460 salary.
That’s also true for the other officials getting raises under this plan.
Do the math!
And that’s only if this is the last increase we see during this budget year!
Mr. Jackson calls this a “one-time [his emphasis] increase for 2016,” a budget year now closed, as we have discussed above. He also says that increases for the fiscal budget year we are currently in, 2017, and 2018 “must be presented via resolution to City Council for its approval.” This will be an action that can be taken at a later time, presumably. The Mayor is reserving the right to propose yet further increases in this current fiscal year, since these raises only go to December 31, 2016. There’s still six months of budget year to go at that point, remember. What would be so wrong with another 1.5%, or even more, right?
The Mayor is today clearly telling us he is keeping his options open to do exactly that: Go back to Council for more raises in this budget year.
Or maybe he will do it in the next budget year, and make THAT one “retroactive,” too!
That is why we are circulating our petition!!!
We do not believe that this Mayor and this Administration deserve any increase over and above a cost of living adjustment. One Percent. One-and-a-half, tops.
Not after all of their failures over the last few years.
We do not believe that these raises should be retroactive. As demonstrated above, “Three Percent” becomes FOUR-AND-A-HALF PERCENT when you count – as you have to, as Terry McEwen admitted to Councilmember Caldwell-Wilson – the “retroactive” portion in THIS YEAR’S BUDGET.
And, oh yeah, a reminder. WE DON’T HAVE A BUDGET.
I’m done yelling. Honest!
I’m done writing. For now.
Sign the Petition, before November 9!!!
If you would like to know how, send an email to trentonpetition2016@gmail.com
That’s trentonpetition2016@gmail.com