What a lovely surprise. I can’t wait! I can’t wait for the rollbacks to begin of the tax and fee hikes our city council has approved since 2008 to keep afloat. Shall we start with the property tax, sales tax, restaurant and bar tax, hotel-motel tax, utility tax or the first gas tax hike? When…
Tag: compensation
A Retelling of DeKalb’s Reduction in Force Story
This ties together a half-dozen posts delivered over four months. It also better separates the facts from the adventures in obtaining them. How the RIF Played Out Publicly In February 2010, staff reported during a special meeting that DeKalb was facing budgetary shortfalls totaling more than $5 million by the end of FY2011. They attributed…
Firefighters Reach a Deal with Buffalo Grove
From the Chicago Tribune today: Buffalo Grove and its firefighters have agreed to defer raises, increase employee health insurance premium contributions and establish a new two-tier wage structure that will pay new hires 10 percent less. There’s an example of the compensation reset some of us have been saying is necessary for DeKalb. Good going,…
Council in the Twilight Zone
Better late than never? Here are a few comments on the City of DeKalb meetings Monday night. Group Therapy When I switched on the Committee of the Whole meeting (admittedly not right at the beginning) there was an immediate feeling of disorientation. The mayor was complaining about a constituent taking up too much of his…
FY2012 Raises
In today’s “Our view: Give DeKalb staff its raises,” the Daily Chronicle argues on behalf of cost-of-living adjustments for management staff. Let’s respond to the reasoning for its vigorous advocacy on behalf of Biernacki & Co.
Rockford Firefighters Get 6% Pay Raise
An arbitrator awarded a 6% pay raise to Rockford firefighters. City officials said the award will cost taxpayers an estimated $618,000 in 2011 and more than $1.2 million in 2012 when the 6.1 percent wage is in effect for a full year. Arbitrator Robert Perkovich rejected the city’s offer of a 2 percent wage increase…
DeKalb’s Structural Budget Issue
Alderman Teresinski cautions us every year that we need to address DeKalb’s “structural” budget issues. Here’s one. [table id=18 /] Do you remember how many employees DeKalb got rid of last year? If memory serves, it was 34 full-timers, for a savings somewhere between $3-4 million. But from the budget figures, you can’t tell they’re…
Police Station & Raises
One of the things I’ve been meaning to ask about the FY2012 budget, but simply did not get around to, is about the total in staff pay raises included in the budget. We supposedly MUST raise taxes to build a police station. What if we extended the pay freeze a couple more years, as we…
The Switch
The City of DeKalb claimed that the hiring of Laura Pisarcik fulfilled recommendations made by Executive Partners, Inc. (EPI). This is what the EPI report recommended: DeKalb would benefit from a proactive centralized procurement program. [p. 19 of Benchmarking section] Definition of procurement, from Wikipedia: Procurement is the acquisition of goods and/or services. It is…
State Employees & Workers’ Comp
Received this morning: this link to the Belleville News series of investigative reports on state employee’s Workers’ Compensation claims. The latest, published April 20, details the paper’s attempts to obtain information regarding successful claims. Recent and upcoming opinions delivered by the Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor that pertain to Workers’ Comp-related Freedom of Information Act…