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Health & Fitness

Salary Circus in Clarkstown

Ridiculous salaries are common in Clarkstown and I began to question them only when I learned about them last year, after the Salary Schedule for 2013 was finally made public. Earlier this month I questioned the proposed 64% increase in the salary of the Town Clerk for 2014. For the details see that earlier post: A Whale of a Raise in Clarkstown – Town Clerk

An individual who would identify himself only as “Brian” responded to that post, but his response was posted so late that many of you might not have seen it. So I quote it in full here:

This blog is disingenuous. Tom Nimick knows that the Town Clerk salary was reduced from $125,000 to around $75,000 a few years ago. The new Town Clerk salary is $121,830. That's less than what that position paid a few short years ago, and we taxpayers aren't on the hook for Loretta Raimone's salary of $100k+ annually. Those are actual savings. Mr. Nimick, include all of the facts in these blogs if you want to be taken seriously by more than four people who attend meetings with you.

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I appreciate Mr. Brian’s addition of the information about the original $125,000 salary for the Town Clerk. I knew that it had been reduced, but I was not familiar with the actual figure. I think that I would have more sympathy for Mr. Brian’s position except for the fact that the salary was reduced for a reason. I am also sure that its reduction was proclaimed by the Town Council as a savings for the taxpayers of Clarkstown. If the action to reduce the salary was appropriate, then eliminating all of the savings except $3,170, as supported by Mr. Brian, is questionable.

But Mr. Brian’s views raise another important issue about salaries in Clarkstown. It is not clear that they match the service for which we are paying. When a new position is created it is possible that it is “priced” for the service being provided, but then increases based on time in service increase the salary and there is no cap. Furthermore, what happens when there is a new hire or a new person is elected? It had been the practice that the individual just stepped into the existing salary. But does that salary still represent the appropriate “price” for the service that is provided for the position? Is there no reduction for the “seniority” portion of the salary that the new person has not yet earned? That is an open question for many of the salaries in Clarkstown.

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In my understanding, the salary for Mr. Sweet as newly elected Town Clerk was appropriately adjusted to remove the “seniority” portion of the pay of $125,000 and he received a salary more in line with the “price” of the service he was providing. In light of that Mr. Brian’s position boils down to an argument that the “seniority” portion of the salary should be considered just part of the “price” of the service even when the new person in the position has no “seniority.” I feel that the Town Council has already ruled on this issue when they reduced this salary. I see no grounds for it to rescind that position. The only debate about the increase in salary should be on the basis of the “price” of the increased service that the position will now provide. Mr. Gromack provided the basis for that evaluation when he said that he expected the workload to go from 35 hours a week to as high as 50 hours a week. I took that higher figure and even if I consider that an average of 50 hours a week, that would represent a 43% increase in work hours. So I do not understand why the Town Council is proposing to increase the “price” of the position to taxpayers by 64%. I am not arguing for no increase, but for an increase that is commensurate with the service for which we are paying. So far no one on the Town Council has been able to provide a reasonable explanation for the newly proposed salary.

I think that the time is long overdue for a full review of the Salary Schedule. I think that the maximum salary for positions should be capped, or capped with an increase in the cap based on a Cost of Living Adjustment. That is the case for many positions in the Federal Civil Service – time in service results in increases only up to the cap. We have many people who remain in the positions in Clarkstown because there are continual increases year after year. Please be aware that those increases are also increasing our pension obligations year after year. The lack of a cap is pricing the positions way above the “price” we can afford to pay.

I think that the introduction of any new personnel into a position should automatically trigger a new “pricing” of the position – “seniority” should be routinely removed from the salary. I support the prior action of the Town Council to do this with regard to the position of Town Clerk.

The position of Receiver of Taxes is also a case in point. The salary was very high because of that “seniority” piece and when it was questioned the Town Council urged us not to worry about it because the position would soon disappear. Mr. Brian apparently does not realize that the new proposed salary for the Town Clerk is equal to the old salary for the Receiver of Taxes with a 2% increase. Apparently that was the basis for the proposed salary and the “seniority” was not removed in the calculation. I question the use of that method to arrive at the appropriate salary for the new duties of Town Clerk.

So it is time for the Town Council to state clearly how they arrived at the proposed 64% increase in the salary of the Town Clerk.

Lastly, let me reiterate what I said in my first post about this issue: this is about the decision of the Town Council, not about Mr. Justin Sweet, the current Town Clerk. On the numerous occasions when I have interacted with Mr. Sweet I have found him to be responsible, professional, and gracious. I also feel that he should be compensated commensurate with the services that he provides the Town.

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