Bad weather forces city to shovel out premium pay

More than 100 workers made in excess of $10,000 in premium pay last year.
By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Deep snow, high water and damaging winds made for fat paychecks for some city workers last year.
City records show 10 workers made between $20,000 and $30,000 in overtime or out-of-rank pay last year.
Twenty-six other workers made plenty of the premium pay, too, receiving $15,000 to $20,000 besides their salary. An additional 81 workers made $10,000 to $15,000 in premium pay. Those figures include scheduled holiday pay for police officers and firefighters, which the city lumps in with overtime.
But it's not cops or firefighters who dominate the top of the premium pay list as some might expect. Just five of the top 20 are police.
Instead, most are street or sewer workers who contended with a yearlong marathon of bad weather, public works officials say.
First, there was a streak of snow and ice early in 2003. That kept street workers on plows for hundreds of extra hours.
Summer rains
Then heavy summer rains pounded the area. Flooding kept sewer workers moving nonstop for three and four days at a time. Most the rains came after regular business hours, adding to the overtime.
"We just seemed to have it week in and week out," he said Larry Gurlea, sewer department superintendent. "We never had a chance to recuperate."
Throw in the cleanup from a late summer tornado that blew through the East Side, and weather helped push city overtime up 31 percent in 2003, to $2.67 million, compared with the previous year.
The federal government reimbursed the city about $35,000 for weather-related overtime, but local taxpayers paid most of the rest.
Overtime was especially high in the street department because 13 workers remain on layoff from a purge in 2002, said Carmen Conglose Jr., deputy director of public works.
"It has a dramatic affect on overtime, especially in times of emergency when you need bodies. About all you have is overtime," he said.
The most telling example of that is Louis Zorella. He received more overtime and out-of-rank pay than any other city worker last year.
Wearing 2 hats
City records list Zorella as the catch basin chief in the sewer department. The job involves the cleaning and repair of catch basins and other storm inlets. He was to make $43,438 in 2003.
He was paid more than $74,000, however, after receiving $30,750 in premium pay.
That's because Zorella also functioned in another job last year that resulted in all the overtime.
He also was the sewer collection system maintenance manager. The job involves him in everything from a missing manhole lid to a major sewer line break. The maintenance manager evaluates a problem and sometimes investigates it himself. He decides which crews, if any, need to be called out to handle a problem.
The job requires being called up -- and called out -- at all hours of the day and night, Conglose said.
"Lou is the front line of contact," he said. "He gets called for everything."
Zorella took on the dual role in October 2002 when the previous maintenance manager retired.
The city would spend about $60,000 in salary and benefits on the position. The city considers Zorella's $30,000 in premium pay in 2003 as the savings of half a salary, Conglose said.
Weather-related work is why street and sewer workers make up most of the top 10 premium-pay recipients and a majority of those who made more than $15,000 in overtime last year, he said.
Three of the street department's four construction foremen are in the top 10; the other is in the top 25. One of them is on-call at all times and must respond to complaints from the public and safety workers.
"When the police department calls, when the fire department calls, or 911, you have to go," Conglose said.
Vital work
Workers who are contact points for malfunctions or maintenance at the sewer plant, the leader of sewer construction crews and one of three plant shift managers also are in the premium-pay top 10.
The work of people like Ralph Dickenson, the sewer plant instrumentation and electrical chief, is vital, Conglose said. For example, it was Dickenson who kept several pump stations from becoming swamped during flooding, he said. Overwhelmed pump stations would have meant chaos in the sewer system, Conglose said.
"We were facing a disaster if that happened," he said.
Dickenson received $26,107 in premium pay on top of his $50,260 salary.
A half-dozen other sewer workers received more than $15,000 in premium pay.
Among them were the other two sewer plant shift managers. The plant has four shift managers, but one is on military duty for a year. That leaves the other three to cover those duties on overtime, said Gurlea, the sewer department superintendent.
Others in the premium pay top 10 are Daniel Brott, the city's income tax administrator, and police Capt. Robert Kane, chief of detectives.
Kane is called out to every homicide and most major crimes in the city.
Brott is one of four people working in the income tax department. He had an assistant to cut down his overtime, as recommended in a state performance audit, but she took a buyout in early 2002.
She wasn't replaced because of the city financial crunch that necessitated buyouts and layoffs, said Finance Director David Bozanich.
Brott is overwhelmed at tax time and, as a longtime employee, has a relatively high salary, so his overtime adds up quickly, Bozanich said.
"We have to provide the service," he said.
rgsmith@vindy.com