Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Town Manager gets a raise

Okay so for those of you who say I never admit a mistake, pay attention.  Last week I predicted Town Manager John Musante, previously tied for highest paid town employee, would get a 5% raise in order to keep up with School Superintendent Maria Geryk, who recently received a 5% bump from her then $140,000 salary.

The town just announced Musante will receive a 1.5% raise, about what all the lower echelon employees have received recently.   Bully for him!
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Take teachers for example: According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette they are currently in the second year of a two-year contract, with each year providing 1.5% COLAs. The contract covering the previous three years had annual COLAs of 2.5, 3.5 and 3%. About half the teachers also get step increases of about 4% a year

9 comments:

  1. Off topic-

    Why aren't you saying anything about this AmChi owner who has been huddling workers in a now-condemned "workers' house?" You pry into the lives of people having parties, but not some stately long standing Amherst citizen who is clearly violating standards of all kinds.

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  2. The Gazette seems to have that covered.

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  3. I've wondered myself about the silence in town about a matter we can affect.

    I guess it's better to spit into the wind about Bank of America than to actually demonstrate to Amherst residents that we object to their policies.

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  4. Some of us have quietly just stopped going to "AmChi" and told our friends why. I've been going there for 30 years, but no more.

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  5. I have also stopped going to AmChi.

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  6. Back on topic, if you compare the school system with the town system it is clear that the town government seems to be much more balance and equitable with the revenues available to pay them.

    Many town employees took pay freezes to help out in bad economic times. Now either the SB or John M. realized the value to having a raise increase typical to the other workers in town government.

    Compare that with the schools. We have Maria getting a 5% raise in troubled times. The teachers are getting something like 6% over 3 years plus step raises. Our teachers are higher paid on average that the rest of the valley (not to say that any of them are getting rich) and the administrators are highly overpaid and just keep getting more bloated.

    Kudos to whomever made the decision to have a realistic raise increase. The town government looks so much more responsible and the schools look like a bloated bureaucracy sucking up all of the resources in town.

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  7. The schools have more cover politically than the Town does. We've seen in the past few years how that works.

    If you criticize the schools in any aspect, you get shouted down. That's just a fact of life around here, and it's been true for decades.

    The only, albeit imperfect recourse is "no" on the override.

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  8. CHeck the facts on the teacher raises.You couldn't be more wrong, 6%, in your dreams.

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  9. Correct amount now published in the original article.

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