Politics & Government

Pay Cuts for Benicia Senior Staff

The City Council voted to cut the pay for the city manager, city attorney and department heads.

The Benicia City Council took the first steps Tuesday to bridge a projected $1.7 million budget gap by cutting the pay and benefits of department heads, the city manager and the city attorney. The paycuts were included in two resolutions, each passing on a 4-1 vote with Councilman Mike Ioakimedes casting both dissenting votes.

Last month the City Council directed staff to close $1.3 million of the projected $1.7 million gap  through salary and benefit concessions from employees. The night's action netted slightly more than 10 percent of the needed concessions.

Ioakimedes said he has been wanting to tell the public his feelings about the way the city is going about the budget-cutting process for quite some time but has been constrained because much of what he wanted to talk about happened in closed session. 

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He was critical of the process of cutting pay and benefits without addressing some of the larger issues such as deferred compensation and the way salary and benefit packages are determined.

"We compare our employee's salaries and benefits to other city's employees and then they compare to us," said Ioakimedes. "It's a closed market. It's looking glass economics."

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Part of the problem according to Ioakimedes, is the inflexibility of city employees charged with finding ways to close the deficit. "They  know how to say 'I can fix this.  I've seen this problem before,' " he said. "They don't know how to say 'I know how to change.' "

Ioakimedes was squarely in the minority on this issue; the other councilmen and the mayor thanked the employees for taking the lead in accepting the salary and benefit cuts.


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