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Comments
I think they should get the raise
Right after they reduce the number of councilors from 13 to 7.
I have every confidence they still won't have too much work to do.
A quick show of hands......
Has anybody out there in the real world gotten a 24% increase lately?
Over the past 5 years or so...
... about 1 percent. ;~{ (so, after inflation, a decrease)
In fairness...
Have you gotten a raise in the last 8 years? The city council hasn't.
FWIW, I'm not defending their proposal, I just happened to notice when they last got a raise. They should probably get a raise with that argument, but 24% is a bit much. Linehan uses 2%/year to calculate the raise, but he seems to forget that a lot of people didn't get raises, or even had pay cuts (I was one) in that time period.
What's funny is that the article quotes Linehan:
Yet, down further:
Raise?
Ignore what they make now.
If you hired these people today to do these jobs, how much would you be willing to pay them? My guess is somewhere south of $75k, maybe south of $50k. It's a part-time job that requires virtually no skill-set if you ignore the ability to get elected in the first place (the real workers are the staff - and they get paid very little - I'd say take the $300k or so and spread it among them).
You could change the whole thing....
And make them town administrator types, being financially responsible for each section of the city. The competition might benefit many areas if you broke it down that way.
No idea what they do, really
Living out in the boonies, I have no idea what the job demands are for city councilor, though I have a pretty good idea it isn't very demanding. They're even allowed to have other jobs, which says a lot.
$89K plus bennies is pretty good pay for a part-time job. Though, I'm sure every city councilor would be glad to tell you all about the excessive demands of the job.....
100 or so staff at Boston City Council. Budget.
Budget. Boston City Council
http://www.cityofboston.gov/images_documents/13%20Non-Mayoral%20Departme...
http://goo.gl/pbPmrq
100 or so staff at Boston City Council
http://bh.heraldinteractive.com/projects/your_tax_dollars.bg?src=Boston2...
http://goo.gl/EEiH3B
Council staff are generally not knowledgeable about new technologies and software that make government more interactive with constituencies and allow greater civic participation. Promote and transfer current central staff. New Central staff at Boston City Council with knowledge of technologies, software, social media, etc. make for a more open government.
Boston cops and firefighters
Boston cops and firefighters got huge raises recently (from city council and the mayor, so i guess they will be supporting their pals in the council to get a raise.
$29 a week is what a patrolman sees extra....
From the last raise. Still pretty good for many people I guess.
Hmm...
Still pretty good for BPD, I guess.
If you sort the entire City of Boston payroll by total earnings, the first 4 pages or so are, except for the School Superintendent, all BPD staff making over $200K per year.
Those aren't patrolmen.
Patrolmen can still make 100k without doing much OT, but the raises aren't really what breaks the back of municipal budgets.
Bill Linehan = Dinosaur.
Bill Linehan = Dinosaur.
Time for him to go. The Founding Fathers didn't want life long politicians.
- The Original SoBo Yuppie
How qualified are Central Staff of Boston City Council ?...
How qualified are Central Staff of Boston City Council ?... Central Staff act as gatekeepers and routinely deflect enquiries for public information, public records of Boston City Council.
So thats why Michelle Wu was
So thats why Michelle Wu was so hung ho to support Linehan. You figured his bigotry and old school ways weren't the draw.
Maybe if they were actually produced something
The city is overwhelmed by noise from boom-boom cars and motorcycles with after market anti-mufflers. English High pollutes the sound environment with noise and their students regularly litter the streets with trash (the copy of a periodic table of elements convinced me of that).
The decades long disconnects between city government and its population leave me wondering whether a City Council as it is constituted works at all? Where were they in the dysfunction of the BRA (lost the contract that requires an observation deck in the Hancock Building?), lax taxi supervision by the BPD and the negligence in monitoring landlords who own thousands of units? I just have a hard time believing that the City Council actually accomplishes anything other than have meetings and blowing a lot of hot air.
From my experience to get something done in the city you have to go outside city personnel to state officials. The highest city levels of city officialdom over the past 10 years seem to live in some frozen state of inaction. They pass laws which are not enforced. They make proclamations that mean nothing. They ask for votes but provide no services for those votes.
Maybe good salaries are incentives to produce?
And avoids corruption, political favors, and government waste in general. When you have low salaries, the job becomes more of a hobby. I say pay them more, but demand something in return.
HA! You think so, huh?
Sorry Pete, but human nature proves otherwise.
Once people get a certain salary, they become very comfortable with that salary, and that salary provides absolutely no incentive to produce from that point on. Seriously.
People work hard at their job because they want to do a good job. It's that simple. They have pride, they like what they do, and they like what they produce. Money has very little to do with it.
I'll leave aside jobs like sales jobs that are incentive-based.
What's the "certain salary"?
Even with the raises, the city councilors will be paid a lot less than even the benchwarmers on the Red Sox and Celtics, so that would mean that Pedroia could just go through the motions even season except for the contract season.
I had a friend who works in one of those fields where I would say they make good pay. He was thinking about running for state rep, until he realized what the pay was. I won't say that the 13 people in question are either overpaid or underpaid, but look at both the flow of councilors to the private sector and the crowds to replace them and it seems to be a wash.
We'll not really....
As long as their job depends on a vote right?
Raises are tied to Mayor's
Hi.
As the article points out, City Councilor raises have been tied to the Mayor's. Since his isn't going up, I don't see any reason for theirs to go up.
If they vote the raises in, then they shouldn't go into effect until the first fiscal year following next fall's election (November 2015). That way, voters can throw them out. The raises would go into effect on July 1, 2016.
But given our one party politics
These guys aren't getting voted out. They rarely face opposition. The ease is the idea of someone clearly disconnected from reality. And I expect we will see it go through.
One-party?
You do know that Boston municipal elections are nonpartisan, right? That city council and mayoral candidates are not affiliated with any political party? But don't let that fact get in the way of your rant.
Let's be realistic
These people are all card carrying Democrats - two or three are probably actually socialists. Nobody with an R after their name or even a right leaning philosophy stands a chance in this town, even in the so-called toney parts of our city on a hill. There may be no parties listed on the ballot - but that doesn't make it an essential element to getting elected around here.
Comment and Question
I think a raise may be due, but let's keep it small. Say, 2%/year skipping the recession of roughly 2008-2010, so maybe just 8%.
But the question Id like to ask Councilor Linehan is - when is the last thing he proposed for Bostonians at large, instead of the political class? I recall his name associated with:
- A redistricting effort fraught with politics and little cohesion
- Renaming a library branch after a controversial figure
- pay raise for himself and colleagues
Has Mr Linehan really led any projects anything that will reduce my taxes? Improve traffic flows or parking? Increase opportunities for the needy?
Honest question from a constituent.
The contempt of the ruling
The contempt of the ruling class knows no bounds. They seem to forget the "Civil SERVANT" bit applies to them serving the public and not the public being serfs to them.
The # of administrators should be capped per # of city employees and no city employee should make more than the top 75-80% income bracket for city residents.
Public employees shouldn't be exponentially richer than those they supposedly serve nor should such a career be viewed as lucrative. It should be about service not pure financial enrichment.
Censored Transcript. Censored Stenographic Record.
Censoring by City Councilors of the Transcript of Captions on webcasts of Public Meetings of Boston City Council and a raise rewarding this less open, this less democratic government organization. Censoring by City Councilors of the Stenograph Record of Public Meetings of Boston City Council and a raise rewarding this less open, this less democratic government organization.
Come on Don
You know the law. Do you really want Maureen Feeney thrown in jail because you don't want to watch the video.
Work on Cambridge first. There is no state law preventing them from publishing the proceedings.