By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2014) — Much happened on Monday night in council chambers as Ordinance and Rules took up Mayor Dan Bianchi‘s request for a huge pay hike for himself and his managers.

The most convenient way to present this boatload will be to break out the narrative into bite size pieces. O&R tabled the matter, making it premature to pronounce a verdict. In Pittsfield, public policy has unfortunately become a matter of The Suits vs. The Little Guy, with the former taking every chance it has to dump on the latter, all for money and power. Greed, thy name is “bureaucrat.”

This time, though, it was different. Why?

This website, PLANET VALENTI, was able to break through the noise and clutter of the many distractions that keep We The People in the dark, including their own adopted apathy and ignorance. The Suits love it when citizens stay away from government. They hate it when a force comes along such as THE PLANET able to rouse the tireless heart within the oppressed, and they start paying attention. On this site and Facebook, THE PLANET assembled an electronic crowd, packed the house, delivered the stem-winder, and democracy’s clock began ticking. We The People besieged councilors with communication, and it made a difference.

And with that, some observations:

Bianchi Pushes a Pay Raise for Bianchi — After the council removed the mayor’s pay hike from the 50 or so others on the list because it requires a supermajority for approval, the mayor and his team began spinning. Bianchi said he never intended to and doesn’t now seek a pay raise for himself. That’s the mayor’s new spin, that the sinful 40% mayoral pay hike will go into effect during the next political term. THE PLANET doesn’t buy it for a second, and neither should you.

Bianchi’s an incumbent. Until he rules out a re-election bid, we can only assume he’s going to run again in the 2015 election. The mayoral winner of that term will be in office for four years at the new pay scale, if councilors are stupid enough to vote for it. There’s also the confusion of the retroactive nature of the pay increase, which takes all approved pay hikes back to July 1, 2013. Correct us if our astrological charts are wrong, but THE PLANET believes that Dan Bianchi was the mayor on that date. Even if he’s not mayor when the next mayor is sworn in, the retroactive nature of the increase will kick back to 4-1-13, putting a pretty $33,000 or so into Bianchi’s pocket for not doing a thing. Of course, he’s making $87,000 a year for not doing a thing right now.

Connell Shoots! He Scores! — O&R chairman Chris Connell got off the best rounds of the night by placing the proposed pay hikes for about 50 city managers into a wider, more proper, more honest context. In contrast to the deceitful presentation of the city consultant, Connell did his own research and examined cost of living and housing costs in Leominster, Salem, Attleboro, and two other communities that pay their public workers about the same as Pittsfield does. The figures are startling. For example, it costs 21% more to live in Attleboro than Pittsfield. Housing there costs a whopping 52% more.

In other words, even without a raise, Pittsfield public employees make more than their colleagues in a host of other communities. Rachel Brown, the uninspired and uninspiring hired gun brought in to tell Bianchi, Sue Carmel, and the rest of the usual suspects what they wanted to hear, somehow failed to make such comparisons in her twisted analysis of the numbers. Brown admitted performing a geographic cost of labor comparison, not a demographic cost-of-living analysis, as Connell did. It makes all the difference in the world, for it takes the fakery of figures and replaces it with the certainty of data. Connell certainly earned his pay Monday night. Well done, my Right Honorable Good Friend.

 Want More Proof That the Mayor is Conning You? — You can find it in Brown’s study. After presenting “numbers” that allegedly show how “underpaid” Pittsfield public employees are, on page 5, under “Market Survey — Benefits,” we find theses two sentences. Naturally, Brown, Bianchi, and his bag lady, city financial “director” Carmel, skipped over this part of the report. THE PLANET quotes: “[The city of] Pittsfield $462 more per year for individual health coverage than the average [in other Massachusetts cities and towns]; [sic] and $662 more per year for family health coverage than the average. The City’s 85% contribution rate to health care compares favorably to the average of the survey respondents at 75%.” Somehow, Brown failed to calculate these significant Pittsfield advantages into her figures.

Where Does Bianchi Find These Stiffs? — One of Brown’s most curious (and troubling) admissions in her syrupy opening statements was saying that she has no clients in the Dreaded Private Sector? Fair enough, but why doesn’t she? Why would a supposedly competent professional eliminate such a large segment of potential business? Could it be the Dreaded Private Sector demands results, real results, because — unlike cities, that can tap taxpayers — the DPS must produce profits, not losses.

Kinnas Asks Questions — During the public comment period, citizen superhero Terry Kinnas asked a few highly relevant questions.

Kinnas: “What productivity gains are the taxpayers going to get? Will the personnel departments of the school department and city be combined? Will the business/accounting functions be combined? What is the real potential cost of each position, including benefits such as health care, Medicare, pension liability, length of work year, length of work day, vacation days, and indemnification?” Kinnas then questioned the confusing presentation of the proposed new pay scale: “What do each of these terms really mean? Where would people be placed on the scale? What professional measurement criteria would be used?”

Bianchi had no answers. Brown had no answers. Dancing Sue Carmel, forever befuddled, had no answers. Carmel especially came off as clueless virtually each time she was called up to the microphone to “enlighten” councilors and the public on various aspects of this mess, a jumble so bad O&R voted unanimously to table the item. When asked for the cost of pay raises to taxpayers, Carmel hemmed two inches too short, hawed a barnful of sawdust, and pulled not a rabbit but a figure of “$300,000” out of the top hat. She provided no explanation for the figure, how that was calculated, or whether it was vetted. Considering the source, if she says $300,000, we’re doubling that to get at the true figure — but that’s just us. At one point, someone used a figure of $400,000. What’s a hundred grand among friends? Oh yeah, and at no time that we heard did Carmel say this was a yearly, recurring cost, not the one and out as she implied.

Foot-in-Mouth Disease — THE PLANET’s guessing that our Right Honorable Good Friend Barry Clairmont, commenting during the public input session, would dearly love to have his statement back about the “pay discrepancies” being the reason so many city employees are stealing on the job. Oh, man, truly? Truly? Where do we being with this?

First, this means there’s NO — ZERO, NIL — accountability within each city department, if theft is that rampant? Is that so? If true, why isn’t Clairmont as councilor demanding something be done about it, like, say, exposing it? Second, the statement accuses every city employee of potential thievery. Third, in a comment made on this website, Clairmont backed off the statement, saying he was only repeating what Scanlon Associates, the city auditor, had said during the exit audit. Did Scanlon say that? PLANET to Barry: People steal or don’t steal because of who they are, not how much they make.

Cram Session — THE PLANET mentioned this yesterday, but it bears repeating. The consultant’s report was 57 pages: 40 pages of “live” content and 17 pages of support material. Bianchi or Carmel (or both) decided to release the document at the meeting, forcing attempts at speed reading with 100% retention on the fly. In a city truly interested in transparency, the report would have been made available on its release date, April 28, and not a week later. That extra week might have given people time to prepare. Bog Forbid.

Who Decides ‘Merit?’ The Mayor, of Course — The one good thing about the new pay scale is that it would eliminate longevity as a criteria for promotion, replacing it with a merit-based system. Looks good on paper, but, as we often say, “This is Pittsfield.” Boil it down, when you eliminate most of Brown’s and Carmel’s B.S., one realizes that the mayor, and the mayor alone, decides if a particular person in one of the affected positions merits a pay raise. No room for politics to enter there, eh??

Lady Light Weight to Get a Pay Hike? — Yes, if the council approves this bad request. Julia Berkowitz Sabourin, key figure in the Scopes Monkey Trial and the mayor’s newly minted gopher at $50,000 a year, would receive a pay hike as an M-2 on the pay scale. What a city!!

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In the end, this money grab by the mayor is not only ill-timed, it’s arrogantly timed. It doesn’t give a hoot about you, the taxpayer. It ignores the pleas of seniors and those on fixed incomes. Finally, to all public employees who are so desperate because of the “little” they make, this is still more-or-less a free country. THE PLANET advises you to update your resume and sell your services in Pittsfield Dreaded Private Sector, dominated as it is by minimum-wage “recreation and resort” service jobs.

See how that works out.

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“The world’s an orphan’s home.” — Marianne Moore, from the poem “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.