City Manager Allen will accept council's decision about raise
Submitted by dbracken on 06/04/2009 - 15:34City Manager Russell Allen has told Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker that he will accept any decision by the City Council to lower his recent $10,000 raise.
Lowering Allen’s salary would be in violation of the city manager’s employment agreement, which states that the “employee’s base salary or other benefits shall not be decreased during the term of the agreement.”
But Meeker said Allen won’t object should that occur. “Russell Allen has told me that if the council wants to adjust his salary based on budgetary reasons he will not hold us to the written contract,” Meeker said.
Meeker said last month that the council would revisit its May 5 decision in light of public anger over Allen’s annual salary being increased by 4.76 percent from $210,000 to $220,000.
Allen’s raise is three-quarters of a percent more than any other city employee would be eligible for under the city manager’s proposed $696 million budget for next year. The raise was criticized by a number of speakers at Tuesday night’s public hearing to discuss the city manager’s budget.
Meeker said Allen’s raise will be reviewed after the council has looked over the entire budget. The council will meet each Monday at 4 p.m. until a budget is passed.
The City Council spent 95 minutes in closed session during its May 2 meeting discussing Allen's performance review. Only Councilman Thomas Crowder voted against the raise after that discussion. Councilman Rodger Koopman did not attend the meeting.
Some councilors wanted to give Allen a larger raise than he received, while others wanted no raise.
Meeker said today that the purpose of the raise was to reward Allen for a job well done.
“What the council was attempting to do was reward an outstanding manager for excellent performance,” Meeker said.
Critics of the raise have said the council’s decision was tone-deaf given the current economic environment and the budget cuts being implemented by the city. The decision drew even more criticism after Allen released his budget, which calls for smaller raises for city employees, the elimination of a cost-of-living adjustment and higher health care costs for some.
“It’s certainly a perception issue. It’s not a lot of dollars but it’s a perception issue,” Meeker said. “And the council pays attention to perception so we’ll take a look at it.”
Koopman vs. Koopman
Submitted by dbracken on 06/04/2009 - 14:09Stay the course?
In your Feb. 20 article "As water levels sink, houses likely will continue to rise," the president of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce commented on the water crisis by saying we should "stay the course." Those are infamous words that have been used before. Should we stay the course? Or is this, like New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, another vivid example that waiting and hoping for "things to work out" doesn't work?
Every expert tells us that this drought is unprecedented in our recorded history, and recently we were told by some of our best weather experts at NCSU that summer weather is the least predictable. Don't we owe it to ourselves and our children to leave nothing to chance? Anything less than that is irresponsible.
This is an opportunity for our largest water users in the business community to voluntarily step forward and partner with the City of Raleigh to help us limit the effects of the drought and to pro-actively plan to combat it. It's pointless to get into a debate with Pepsi as to whether the company uses 400,000 gallons per day or 100,000 gallons. The point is, the company is part of our community, it employs local people (our neighbors) and we need its help to manage this crisis and, once beyond it, to create a permanent and sustainable environment in which businesses can thrive while we protect our water resources.
We need to accelerate the implementation of the Lake Benson water treatment plant. We need to look at a possible pipeline to Lake Jordan. We need to significantly increase our investment in a "gray water" system. Large businesses that benefit from this infrastructure can help the city get there more quickly by investing in these types of solutions.
Telling people we ran out of water because we didn't act while we could have is not leadership. I want Raleigh to be vibrant and wildly successful. I do not wish to put anybody out of business. I do not wish to have a building moratorium if unnecessary.
But let's at least put all of our options on the table and weigh them carefully. To "stay the course" and hope things will get better is not a solution when we're out of time and we need responsible leadership.
Rodger Koopman, City Councilor, District B, Raleigh
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/letters/story/968288.html
As I have said, our water system is like an aircraft carrier; you can't turn it on a dime. However, we do know we need to move from a system that assumes water is an infinite resource to a system that recognizes water is limited and must be managed as a whole, and not just by selling more of it. We also need to reduce debt so we stop raising rates by double digits each year. Conservation and reuse help us reduce the need for new infrastructure, reducing future pressure on water rates.
Furthermore, we need to make sure more of new growth pays for itself. This means shifting the burden from taxpayers to developers. It means higher capacity fees and possibly Adequate Public Facilities Ordinances to ensure schools, roads and water and sewer exist before new neighborhoods go in, rather than as an afterthought.
Taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook to pay for it all. Developers need to pay their fair share. This council has already taken steps in that direction by increasing impact fees and water connection fees on new development.
We need a smart reuse system. Instead of just one big city-owned system, we should create incentives for proven "local capture" solutions such as cisterns, rain barrels, etc., so we can reduce the millions spent on new capacity.
This is what I ran on in 2007 and have consistently supported. My council record clearly shows this.
Rodger Koopman, Councilor, District B, Raleigh
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/letters/story/1534360.html
Meeker touts conservation and takes a jab at critics of Raleigh's water rates
Submitted by dbracken on 01/27/2009 - 10:05Last year at this time Raleigh was mired in a historic drought and Mayor Charles Meeker's used much of his state-of-the-city address to talk about the need for water conservation. During his address on Monday, Meeker noted that water issues have taken a backseat to other matters this year, thanks both to the tanking economy and the fact that Raleigh has received 50 inches of rain since last spring.
But Meeker still used a portion of his 12-minute speech to talk about conservation. He said the city needs to renew its focus on conservation by making a push to install more low-flow devices and to use less drinking water to irrigate lawns. (The city is also expected to adopt tiered water rates later this year, a system that charges customers higher rates the more water they consume.) More notably, Meeker on Monday took a jab at City Council members who have made an issue of rising water rates.
Raleigh increased water rates by 15 percent in July, and City Manager Russell Allen anticipates that another 15 percent increase will be needed to pay for expensive capital improvements that are now being made to the system. Meeker said Monday that Raleigh's water rates remain among the lowest in the state and he went on to explain why conservation should be pursued even if it temporarily increases water rates:
"This is a challenge very simply because you sell water to pay for the improvements ... at the same time the City Council doesn't want to increase the rates because the customers don't like rate increases and the customers happen to vote in city elections. But our community has got to be better than that ... we don't need to be using drinking water to irrigate our lawns as much as we are ... even though it may not be popular in the short run because it will affect rates, it's the right thing to do in the long run."
This debate over water rates is likely to resurface at the City Council's special budget work session in March and then continue on until a new budget is adopted in May or June. Councilmen Thomas Crowder, Rodger Koopman and Russ Stephenson have all expressed their displeasure with water rates increasing and are likely to press hard for the city to find some way to spare residents a rate increase this year. Meeker made his position clear in Monday's speech.
