S. Tahoe council defers city manager review
The South Lake Tahoe City Council on Tuesday continued the review of City Manager Nancy Kerry to the Oct. 1 special meeting.
At that meeting the 2014-15 budget will be voted on, as will contracts with multiple employee groups.
Nancy Kerry
“She wants employees to come first,” Mayor Hal Cole told Lake Tahoe News after the Sept. 16 meeting.
“Least and last” is Kerry’s approach when it comes to any adjustments to her contract. In other words, she wants as many of the employee contracts to be finalized before the council offers her a raise.
In the past, Kerry turned down the one time 2 percent increase that was like a bonus for all staff. She also said no to what should have been an automatic 5 percent step increase.
She is also the first city manager in decades who has not taken a car allowance.
“We are going to offer her a package that includes some additional compensation,” Cole said.
Details will be released once the council votes on it next month.
The other key item discussed in closed session on Sept. 16 involved the property the city owns at the corner of Ski Run Boulevard and Highway 50. Cole and Councilwoman Brooke Laine will be meeting with each of the entities who submitted a letter of intent to develop the site. They are going to develop a format be able ferret out the best proposal.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
So the city wants to take away benefits promised to some workers in their hire contracts and then give a pay raise and other benefits to one of the highest paid city employees? Go figure…
Wouldn’t it be justified if all City Council raises were directly related to proven city revenue increases derived from their direct involvement in projects they created and completed, and the positive or negative impact these projects made on the community.
A raise? I like Nancy, but I think she is doing just fine financially! $14,000(+) a month ought to suffice.
Imagine that, the City Manager is supposed to get a raise for screwing City employees. But let’s wait until the “screwing” is over so that it doesn’t look bad. Sounds like politics and city management at its best right down to the department heads. The “elected” officials who ALL have their own special interests are elected because they are the most popular “candidates” but they don’t have any more expertise in how to make city government work than me, you or anyone else. A well oiled machine that is and has been dysfunctional for a long time. We all pay the price for their uneducated/biased inept decisions. Then in years to come the next batch of elected officials can just blame the previous council members as has been past history. The city of SLT is going the way of the state of CA., down the drain faster than anyone can plug it. Job well done, you can all hold your heads up high and be proud of yourselves.
Please provide specific suggestions on how the city taxpayer should deal with the millions and millions of unfunded healthcare liability. Should we raise taxes? Reduce services? Attacking the city manager is a waste of time. Her raise should she even take it is minuscule compared with the unfunded liability issue which she did not create. She is merely cleaning up the mess of the long term union city council relationship. Move on.
Since the Fire and PDs associations didn’t meet the 9/15 5:00PM deadline, are they they going to impasse? The other units passed the retiree healthcare reform by the “drop dead date” plus other benefits like they were asked.
So much for Fire and PD not being part of the team. Their true colors are coming to light and their greed.
OOps, I meant to say City Management Officials raises
Yup, screw the employees and give kudos to the screwer. All at the same meeting. That’ll work.
As screwy as the whole bunch of them are, someone probably sees this as a wise political move.
By the way, to “Slapshot,” if you want to deal with the unfunded liability, you might consider dumping the two councilmen who voted year after year for a benefit that the City originally proposed as a way to spread employee costs over a number of years, yet never bothered to fund those costs.
Employees, and, apparently, former employees (until the lawyers step in – that’ll really help the City) funded those City proposed benefits by not taking cost of living raises and accepting a huge drop in the City’s wage position as compared to other California cities – bottom 20 percentile to bottom 5 percentile. Now they’re going to be asked – well, forced – to throw out the benefit that the City never funded, but the employees did by accepting minimal wage changes.
And it was all the City’s idea. Including the two long-term council folks who still sit there, proclaiming ignorance over what happened.
Who are those two long-term council members? (Sorry, I can’t vote in SLT)… but I still want to know.
I hope the City Manager will not take some of these negative comments to heart. We should be grateful to her for her courageous stands in putting the city on the right footing, facing squarely the unintended consequences of earlier city actions and thus putting the city on path of fiscal health and growth.
She is not about herself. I hope many will join me in showing their gratitude to her. It really is a thankless job. Its pay is commensurate with the impact it has on the welfare of the city. Her competent services would be worth much more anywhere else.
I anticipate some personal attacks from this crowd for my position So be it; she deserves support.
I worked for the City for 28 years and my retirement salary for a year is equal to 2 months of the City Managers $14,000+ dollars a month,
One year equal to 2 months of her salary,
Nancy has done a good job as City manager, but to screw the employees out of their benefits is just not fair.
The 2 Council people that were in favor of giving the employees the Health Care benefits were HAL COLE and TOM DAVIS, and now they can’t wait to take it away and give raises to Staff. Can’t wait to see how much Staff Salaries go up now!!!
Copper how do you propose the taxpayers deal with the millions in unfunded liability. Getting rid of the council people as you suggest is a fine start but that won’t pay the bill. Also you didn’t seem to mind those two while you were enjoying the benefits.The sad reality is this community has been dominated by an alliance between employee unions and council people that did not do their job in looking out for the taxpayer ultimately the gravy train would come to an end and it has,. Again, how do you want us to pay for this?
Please hire me- i’ve run out of spendable income. I will not be able to fund unfunded liability anymore!
Good luck Slapshot. The majority of these bloggers aren’t seeking, nor do they want to identify solutions; they just want to criticize and complain. I think it’s interesting that many of the long-time residents who complain are the very same people who were the voting constituency way back when the two long-time council members were elected and were making all those decisions.
I agree with Mr. Alyeshmerni 100% and thank him for his eloquent comments.
here’s my suggestion – stop wasting money on Redevelopment.
that is where all of the available cash goes, to pay the large loan pmt.
starting in 1989 with the $100,000,000.00 loan and no way to pay the yearly note.
the City just keeps borrowing money kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
the Hole in the Ground used to generate $500,000.00 per year in City tax revenue with all those old funky properties,
7 years no income? now that Strip Mall will not generate squat. I was down there last night checking it out.
the Marriot – we paid 30 million for that land and sold it to them for 2 million and they do not generate enough taxes to cover the note.
bad choices by old Hal and the people before him.
the Parking Garage the list goes on.
This town has looked like a “sheet”-hole for a long time. I am grateful for redevelopment, but a lot of it has gone to the wrong places.