Is there enough collective will to reign in city spending in Peoria?

There will be votes next week on at least two of the items that failed on 5-5 votes at Tuesday’s Peoria City Council meeting. One vote will be on whether or not to reduce automatic longevity pay increases given to non-union (mostly management) employees.

The tie votes happened because At-large council member Eric Turner was absent (I understand that he had a work commitment). That makes him the swing vote next week. From what I’m hearing now, Turner is predicted to be in favor of limiting longevity increases, but not for raising the amusement tax.

Let’s look at these two issues:

Currently, these workers get a 2 percent pay bump for every five years they are employed by the city. That translates to an 8-percent increase over base pay for someone employed for 20 years. Council member Bob Manning (3rd District) proposed to lower that to a half percentage point per five years, so that a 20-year employee gets a 2 percent bump on top of base pay.

Did you know that there are four city employees who earn as much as $200,000? Did you know that a new hire in the city’s underworked Equal Employment Opportunity office earns about $41,000 despite having no special training or skills and no clearly defined responsibilities.

The money this would save wouldn’t be all that significant in the short run. But it would have several effects. First, there are a handful of senior employees who would quit almost immediately. Many of these people are not well-loved by council members because they are evasive when asked even the most simple of questions and because the council members believe they have the best interests of all Peoria neighbors at heart, nor are they particularly concerned about saving taxpayer’s money. I won’t mention names, but I have a speaking suspicion these people know who they are.

Here’s my suggestion: If the are council members who think specific employees shouldn’t be employees anymore, then hold an executive session and fire them. Don’t play games. Wait until the next time someone replies to a specific question with a vague, deceptive or self-serving answer, then immediately go into executive session and take a vote on whether to fire that person’s sorry ass. You would be surprised at how this will improve the quality of the work performed from that point on.

From a taxpayer’s standpoint, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for highly-paid employees to leave so they can be replaced with newer people with fresh ideas who will earn less because they haven’t been around as long.

I’m not completely opposed to longevity pay. I simply thing more money should be available for merit-based increases. But I do think that an employee who simply meets his performance goals—but isn’t a spectacular employee—should get some bump in pay beyond cost of living. Judging by the almost complete lack of turnover, longevity pay is too high now. But it certainly shouldn’t be eliminated completely.

Second: This sends a message to union employees that longevity pay is going to be an issue in future negotiations. Police and firefighter salaries are often set during interest arbitration. That means some arbitrator will look at what is done at 40-year-old list of nine “comparable” cities. The city might just win that battle. Non public safety employees would have to strike to retain that level of longevity pay if the city council is firm about lowering or even reducing it.

One option I keep hearing is that the city might want to do away with it for new employees, thereby creating a two tier pay system.

A question left unanswered is what affect longevity pay has on the city’s required contribution to pensions. Does the city’s pension contribution increase 8 percent for employees getting the 8 percent bump? It would seem council members who like to complain about the high cost of pension contributions might want to look at this.

Speaking of employee bennies, I don’t think it’s out of line for city employees to have to pay 20 percent of their health insurance costs. Show of hands, folks: How many public sector employees pay less than 20 percent? I didn’t think so …

Now, regarding taxes …

Second-district council member Barbara Van Auken’s motion to raise the tax on amusements (movie and Peoria Civic Center tickets, DVD and video rentals, etc) by an additional 2 percentage points failed. It wasn’t stated at the time, but this would be expected to generate enough money to fully staff Fire Station 11, which isn’t capable of fighting fires because of budget cuts made in the 2004 budget.

A source has told me that if the city were able to identify a reliable source of roughly $700,000 in annual new revenue, there might be as many as nine votes out of 11 to re-open Station 11 to fire fighting duties. The trouble is that there aren’t enough votes to get to that point.

For example: There’s one council member who claims to support Fire Station 11 and is willing to raise taxes to do it, but adamantly opposes any spending reductions that might lower employees’ paychecks (i.e. longevity increases). A different council member also claims to support re-staffing Fire Station 11 and is willing to consider cuts in automatic longevity increases, but won’t even consider a tax increase.

And then there are people like John Morris (who I like as a person, I’d like to say) who just doesn’t see the danger in keeping the station closed, and begrudges every dime spent on firefighter salaries because it isn’t going to his pet issues like the Civic Center.

Council member Chuck Grayeb was supposed to make the motion for the amusement tax, but he was in a snit over efforts to cut salaries.

Where does all this leave the hated $6 per month garbage tax? It’s chances of repeal are slim, I suspect. There is simply no collective will on the council to raise property taxes to replace the millions being generated by the garbage tax.

And judging by what I saw Tuesday, there’s also little collective will to cut non-essential spending.

Technorati Tags: Grayeb, Manning, VanAuken, garbage tax, fire station 11, merit pay, longevity pay, Peoria, Peoria City Council

Posted at Peoria Pundit