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Girard mayor: Raise is due
girard
Although city council has kept Mayor James Melfi in the dark on proposed administrative raises, he said a modest raise is due.
“I have never asked for a raise, and I didn’t ask for this one,” Melfi said. “But the council’s logic is that it gives the administration what the unions have received over the last eight years.”
He said city union salaries have increased 6 percent since 2003.
Under next year’s budget, both the unions and the administration will be paying $2,000 out of pocket for health care.
Melfi said the last time anyone in the administration received a raise was in 2000, just a year before the state placed the city in fiscal emergency Aug. 8, 2001.
At that time, Girard’s general fund was $2.5 million in the red, the mayor said. Today, he said the general fund is $500,000 in the black.
“We just managed things differently,” he said.
Throughout the decade, Girard cut costs, including 25 percent of its work force. The city will be out of fiscal emergency Jan. 1, 2012.
Under the proposed raises, city council members’ salaries would return to pre-fiscal emergency levels from $3,000 for city council members to $4,606.27 in 2012. Council president salary will be raised from $3,300 to $4,927.64. Four administration positions will receive 6 percent raises.
According to Council President Reynold Paolone, they are:
Safety Service Director Jerome Lambert now makes $48,025 and would make $51,090.
Mayor Melfi now makes $42,990 and would make $45,760.
City Auditor Sam Zirafi now makes $38,000 and would make $41,080.
The law director position, held by Law Director Mark Standohar, who will not run for re-election, now makes $31,512 with benefits or $34,433 without benefits. That person would make $33,524.12 with benefits or $36,630 without benefits.
If approved Wednesday, the raises would still have to be reviewed and approved by the mayor. He would not say whether he would approve or veto a 6 percent raise or what he would consider a minimum raise.
Standohar, who vocally opposed the raises based on their timing, agreed that those in the administration who endured the “hard- fought battles” deserve a raise. But he said the city council raising salaries after the primary elections gave a sense of “impropriety.”
“That’s why you should vote for pay raises before filing [for an election] or before the primary — not after, when you know who will be in that position,” Standohar said.
But Paolone said write-in candidates can still file through August and three of the seven council members are running for the at-large positions.
“This puts council pay back to where it was before they cut their pay — not a penny more,” Paolone said, adding he voted for the cut as a 1st Ward council member in 2001.
The council will have the final vote on the raises Wednesday at 7 p.m.