In the Oct. 8 edition of The Citizen, Peachtree City Councilman [Mike] King was quoted saying “Being in the 35th percentile is an embarrassment. We’ve got a chance to do something that will force the can not to be kicked down the road. From a business standpoint, you get what we pay for.”
In my opinion, the embarrassment is that Councilman King and the PTC Council obligated PTC taxpayers to over $600,000 in new spending on a whim without doing any homework.
From a business standpoint, the council failed to use critical thinking to ask the right questions before making an important decision.
Further, the council adopted the pay increase without giving consideration to how this budget killer is going to be paid for.
The council gave precedence to making 230 employees — out of which less than 70 reside in PTC — happy, over their duty to PTC citizens and taxpayers, and failed to abide by their duty to PTC taxpayers to act in a fiscally responsible manner.
Seeking reasons as to why PTC Council had voted in such an irresponsible way, I personally met with Mayor Vanessa Fleisch on Oct. 10. During that meeting Mayor Fleisch assured me that all matters related to the pay study had been extensively researched and evaluated and that all conclusions, particularly the fact that employees were being paid at the 35th percentile, were amply documented. Mayor Fleisch agreed to make the validating documentation available.
What I received from Mayor Fleisch was just the report presented to the PTC Council by Condrey & Associates, the consultant who conducted the salary study at a cost of $40,000. Said report consisted of only of nine pages full of generalities and completely devoid of detail to substantiate the 35th percentile claim.
The Condrey report, and what I received from Mayor Fleisch, clearly did not answer the question as to how it was determined that PTC salaries were in the 35th percentile.
Upon said lack of substantive data from Mayor Fleisch, I then moved to submit a formal open records request to the city asking for the basis of the claim that PTC employees are being paid at the 35th percentile of relevant labor markets.
In the responses received from several PTC staff — but notably none from Mayor Fleisch — there was absolutely no proof of the 35th percentile claim. In fact, as noted by one particular response, provided by PTC Human Resources Director Ellece Brown, there is patent suggestion that such claim is bogus. She wrote, and I quote:
“Dr. Condrey made this statement to us (the pay raise evaluation committee) and before City Council (only orally). I do not, however, have any written documentation from Dr. Condrey to support this statement.”
In other words, contrary to what Mayor Fleisch personally asserted to me in our meeting, whereby she claimed everything had been extensively evaluated and documented, no one within the PTC government could provide evidence to back the 35th percentile allegation.
Moreover, inasmuch as the pay increase was voted on the basis of the “embarrassment that the city staff was being paid at the 35th percentile” as stated by Councilman King, the fact is that claim was at the time of the Council vote, and still remains, unsubstantiated and invalid.
That renders the very costly and long-term impact pay raise, a decision based on a lie. That, more than an embarrassment, is an act of irresponsibility by those in the PTC Council who voted for the pay increase.
As bad as all the above is, there are still other grave concerns surrounding the pay raise vote. To wit:
• Why did PTC high ranking staff contract for the study without prior council review and approval?
• Why were employees that would benefit from the pay study responsible for approving the study and then permitted to make recommendations to influence the council’s vote?
• Why did all except one of the members of the pay study committee receive significant salary increases, including two key members who got approximately 26 percent and 18 percent increases? Isn’t there any norm against self-designating and approving pay raises?
• Why if PTC employees were being underpaid, as claimed, has PTC not lost personnel to better paying jobs elsewhere? In fact, PTC has experienced a resignation rate of only 3 percent of its total workforce, which is significantly lower vs. comparable relevant industry markets.
• Why are PTC overall salaries for similarly comparable roles and/or function categories higher than those in Fayetteville and Newnan, in some cases by percentages in the double digits?
• Why didn’t the pay study take into account the very substantial other compensation benefits such as health and retirement plans enjoyed for free or very small costs to city employees into its overall assessment of pay structure?
• Why did the pay study include so many city governments (16 out 20) that were not relevant market competitors for PTC employees?
And the final and real embarrassment is that so few citizens seem concerned with the fiscal and ethical questions surrounding this pay study sham and its inevitable increase in tax to pay for it.
Why are so few PTC taxpayers opposed to the “tax and spend” mindset behind this decision? Why are so few worried by its long-term impact on PTC’s future?
Are Mayor Fleisch and Council members Ernst and King to be proven right when instead of acting right and abiding by their fiscal responsibility as elected officials, they shrug this off and bask in the comfort that “by the time next election comes, it will all be forgotten by the voters”?
Franco Artiles-Pubillones
Peachtree City, Ga.
