Dear Honorable Mayor and Councilmembers,

Because I will be unable to attend Tuesday's meeting, I wanted to share
some thoughts with you for your discussion about management salaries. I
am very glad you deferred this discussion until you and the public had
additional detailed material to review. Because of the important role
our city's executive management team plays in serving the community and
the impact of compensation decisions on both the city budget and
contract negotiations, I think it's well worth a very thoughtful
analysis of numerous factors. Frankly, I find the analysis provided to
be disturbingly simplistic.

As I perused the staff report and Attachment D, especially, a number of
questions came to mind that I hope you will address:
1) Does the compensation used for Menlo Park in these comparisons
include perks such as car allowances and bonuses? In other words, total
compensation? How many other cities give bonuses, and what are those
averages? Nothing is in the Other column of Attachment D for any city,
including Menlo Park even though it's clear these are part of the
executive management compensation as shown in other Attachments.

2) Where is the information about the individual cities' high and low of
their salary range? It appears that what is being compared is the actual
salary of an individual in each city who holds a particular position
being compared, which isn't that helpful. It is more meaningful to
compare RANGES than to compare salaries of individuals who may have
vastly different skills and experience levels.

3) Where is there consideration of other factors that might justify
relative differences in compensation ranges for positions, rather than
comparing a simple average of actual salaries of individuals from
different cities, and setting a range based on actual high and low
salaries of individuals? Examples:

* Experience - In some instances, such as City Manager position,
there are excellent reasons for MP's city manager to be paid lower due
to differences in experience. Mr. Boesch brought no experience as a city
manager or even as assistant city manager, so should not have been paid
comparably to more experienced peers elsewhere.
* City size (population, budget, employees, complexity) - Menlo
Park is compared as a peer to larger cities such as Palo Alto and
Redwood City.

* Responsibilities -The roles are different (for example - Asst
City Manager of Los Altos also has Finance and Accounting)

 4) It's clear that several other cities have not given raises to some
positions for several years.

5) How is it that some MP executive managers are paid above the top of
their pay grade?

6) Menlo Park certainly should compensate fairly in order to attract or
retain talent. Is turnover a problem? That should be a factor.

7) Is management performance where it should be? Where are the results
of economic development for example? Why is there so much distrust of
the budget? What responsibility do city executives have for planning?
There are community expectations of management performance here.

8) Fairness to taxpaying residents. Many residents suffered mightily in
the economic downturn and will never recover what they lost (no catch-up
or retroactive raises). Many residents also have had to assume a much
greater financial share of their benefits such as medical and retirement
benefits. While I'm not suggesting the lowest common denominator, I am
suggesting that the Council should consider also the residents who will
be paying their own household bills and those of the city, too.

Explicit consideration of factors like this is important. Then it's a
conscious choice as to whether to establish pay ranges at, above, below
other cities (and which ones) for various positions. First, you need to
understand what those ranges are, and they aren't available in this
report.

Compensation decisions, in a people-driven organization, are amongst the
most important ones you will make. Don't delay needlessly, but please
don't rush.

Sincerely,
Patti Fry, Menlo Park resident
Received on Sat Mar 17 20:48:39 2007