The Open Records requests to Peachtree City concerning the recent salary and compensation study and the vote to implement it are now on the www.PTCPride.org web site. The city’s response is also there.
What did we learn? Highlights are:
· The RFP seems to lead the responder to the conclusion that all is not well in PTC. In the background section there is the statement: “Since 2000, inequities and compression have developed, and the criteria and weighting of various factors of the system need to be updated.”
The question is: if we are paying professionals to make the assessment, why not let them make their own conclusions?
· The firm selected to provide the study bid a fee of $39,500. This is right at the limit City Manager James Pennington can sign without council approval. An interesting coincidence?
· The city staff, nor the council, nor Condrey Associates, did not evaluate the impact of GASB 67 or GASB 68 when considering the PTC salary action. The GASB regulations have been put in place to ensure pension costs are not hidden by municipalities until it is too late.
· City Manager Pennington, Mayor Fleisch, and Council members Ernst and King approved the salary action prior to the job descriptions for the staffs having been completed. It begs the question, why the rush?
· The salary and classification committee was comprised of seven city employees who were guiding their own salary evaluations and increases. One member of this committee received a 26 percent increase.
· According to the study document on page 9, it appears that benefits were not considered in the study or in the council deliberations.
There is a wealth of information regarding this study, its formation, and implementation at www.PTCPride.org. Additional information will be requested via the Open Records process to understand how the taxpayers were saddled with over $900,000 of additional expenditures by a questionable study and process.
The question is not should we compensate city employees fairly. Emphatically we should. The question is the process used to procure and implement this study.
Randy Boyett
Peachtree City, Ga.
