The monthly Monte Rio Recreation & Park District
[MRRPD] Board Meeting of October 8th, 2012 was captured on video (with
Board knowledge), for the public, in four parts {posted to YouTube and
Facebook, links available by e-mail from TuesdayPeter@sbcglobal.net}.
The focus of the meeting was a proposal by the Chamber
of Commerce, through Mary Cower-Bacon (MCB), of a massive pay raise for the
recently acquired Diane DeMartini (March 1st 2012), from a part-time
hourly position at $15/hour to a {some think} egregiously excessive, salaried
exempt position at $45,000 a year, initially with an hourly work allocation of
80% summer / 50% winter. The MRRPD Board
had previously agreed, as had Diane, to work at a rate of $19,500 per year as
of March 1st, 2012.
This massive raise is being
questioned by some on the board across of number of issues:
1)
??
+145% ?? – Maybe 10%, but these days 5% is huge – 145% ???
2)
A
job description change ?? Those familiar
with the MRRPD also know that Roberta defined that job these past ten years,
and there wasn’t that much variation in how it could be done.
3)
The
gist of the reasoning is that a lot of money can be saved by not having the
County do our book-keeping, accounts, receivables and payables, and
check-writing; but as we all know from recent headlines, having a single person
in charge of all financial operations, from front to back, is an invitation to
disaster. Cutting out the County may
save some money, but any reputable book-keeper will concur that two or three
sets of eyes should be on cash flows like this.
Procedures should be in place to assure that checks and balances are in
place by competent professionals, and not just rubber stamps by board members.
4)
Salaried
Exempt ? instead of hourly – give us a
break – silk purse out of a sow’s ear ?? – will we see a white shirt and school
tie ?? Is it even legal to pay someone
less than two times minimum wage for a full week {times 40}, which is $640 a
week, and call them a salaried exempt employee?
The Chamber says, “It’s O.K., legally”.
Some Board members say, “No.”
5)
There
is the issue of the changed Job Description, which supposedly is to do
something radically different. It wasn’t
written down as a new Job Description July 31st . In fact, this new Job Description has yet to
be approved by the Board. It hasn’t come
up on the Board agenda, even though it’s dated July 31st. Some saw it for the first time, Oct 8th. It’s never been agreed to. It is not backed up by any new policies and
procedures manual to explain how this new process works.
6)
In
fact, side issue though it is, there have only been two publically announced
meetings of the Personnel Committee these past six months, each on a different
day of the week and different times: no published minutes; merely a few “memos”
to the Board by its Chair. Nonetheless,
MCB is proposing, through the committee, and based on a revised Job Description
[unsupported by any newly documented policies and procedures], which the Board
did not have sight of – [not at all for the initial “secret”, special meeting
where it was on the agenda for a vote, but dropped], and not until moments before
a proposed vote on the subject in a second meeting where it was also an agendized
item. The public will be reminded that
this was exactly the same strategy being attempted with the Asbestos Contract,
recently, where the contract proposal was presented to the board, 30 seconds
before the vote on its acceptance.
7)
Over
and above the prior six legal and morally justified reasons for public outrage
and rejection of these sort of shenanigans, there is the moral issue of why
should the MRRPD, experiencing a slightly favorable turn in its financial
situation, dump all the rewards, tens of thousands of dollars [$24,750 extra,
over and above what was signed on for 7 months ago], on a recently acquired
hourly secretary rather than take time to consider how to properly reap these
rewards and redistribute them to the community at large: improved property maintenance;
programs at the center; enhanced communications with the public; whatever the
public may want - voiced through a public meeting to discuss this windfall.
