Want Candidates for DeKalb City Clerk? The First Step is to Restore the Compensation

If you are a resident of City of DeKalb, this post is for you – especially if you voted in the General Election of 2012. DeKalb has an at-large city clerk elected by the people, despite at least two referendums over the past decade asking to switch to an appointed clerk. The latest question came…

Final Payouts to DeKalb’s Retired City Manager

When I told you about City of DeKalb’s policy to allow staff in administrative positions to bank comp time — as well as how much comp certain employees had accumulated — I could not include the comp and other accumulations of former city manager Mark Biernacki because he’d already cashed out in mid-June. But, here…

Look Who’s NOT Getting Comp Time

The employment contract between City of DeKalb and its new manager, Anne Marie Gaura, is part of the agenda for Monday’s council meeting. I’m pretty pleased about this pick — Gaura’s resume looks the best to me of all the city manager candidates in terms of range and depth of experience — and I’m pleased…

DeKalb’s Compensated Absences Banking

This is more from the June 2013 Benefits Hours Report I was telling you about yesterday. [table id=79 /] You can see that the banked comp (560) truly is banked, and the administrator-depositors are enjoying nice, risk-free annual increases when raises and COLAs are applied. The caps on unused sick leave are very high in…

Comp Time Champs

***Clarification*** added 12/3 due to a question that came up in this Facebook discussion: Firefighters often work overtime and they almost always receive overtime pay for it. However, according to their contract they might with permission accumulate a little comp time instead, up to 205 hours, after which no more comp time is permitted to…

Property Tax Levy & IMRF Contributions

In “DeKalb Gives First Approval to Property Tax Levy,” we get this: The aldermen had previously set the ceiling for a property tax levy at $9.67 million, and were given two options by city staff to set the request at either $9.67 million or $9.63 million – the amount the city levied last year. According…

DeKalb’s Pension Funding Progress

The Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) includes a table called “Schedule of Funding Progress” for each pension fund that the city is responsible for. An actuary determines the fund assets and liability, and from these are calculated the percentage that the fund is funded as well as the unfunded liability in dollars. I’ve pulled numbers…