By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, TUESDAY, MAY 6 ,2014) — Faced with fourth and 26 from its own 15, the city council’s Ordinance and Rules committee punted, unanimously tabling Mayor Dan Bianchi‘s controversial request for a managerial and exempt pay raise. Good call. They got off a booming, deep spiral, a Ray Guy kind of kick, if you will, pinning the mayor back inside his 30.

The pay hike would raise salaries on the city side by nearly 40 percent in some cases. Moreover, it would be retroactive to July 1, 2013. “Radioactive” would be a better word. By the way, one of those 40% cases is the pay hike the mayor proposes for himself.

The great news: O&R didn’t recommended approving the raises. The good news: All five members (Chris Connell, chair; Melissa Mazzeo; Kathy Amuso; Jonathan Lothrop; and Kevin Morandi) were present, and they unanimously decided not to decide … yet.

One of the reasons this was a wise move is that Bianchi didn’t make the consultant’s study available until the meeting itself. It’s the same, tired tactic of throwing a bunch of data and numbers at deciding officials at the last second, so they won’t have time to intelligently vet the item in question. The report, “Management Classification and Compensation Study Final Report” dated April 28, 2014, is 40 pages long with 17 more pages of ancillary material. Councilors, press, and public were expected to speed read the report and fully grasp it contents.

In the end, O&R agreed the information was too late, too spotty, and too incomplete for them to make a decision. Ladies and gentlemen, score that as a run for The Little Guy. Your communications with and to the councilors did its job. It made clear where the vast majority of you stand on this issue. Remember, you are their boss. They must represent you, not themselves, not the mayor, not The Suits, not the Special Interests, and not even their own consciences.

——- 000——-

Besides tabling, O&R took two other official actions: Councilors actually bumped up the proposed new pay grade for the assessor by two levels (not good for taxpayers) and, on a motion by Lothrop, voted to separate the mayor’s proposed hike from all the others. Unlike all the other proposed hikes, which require a simple majority from Our Right Honorable Good Friends on the city council (six votes), for the mayor to get his $33,000 or so bump up to $120,000, he will need a supermajority from the council (eight votes), per charter rules.

Setting the Scene Properly

To set the scene for you properly, the chambers were probably about 3/4 full — an astounding showing for a subcommittee meeting, which usually has the five council members … and Terry Kinnas. Well, Kinnas was there tonight, as were 15 or so other citizens. The remainder were department heads, elected officials (Barry Clairmont, Nick Caccamo, Church Cotton, Lisa Tully) and the mayor’s team. If the number of citizens was 15, that’s 15 times more than such a meeting usually draws.

Moreover, councilors mentioned their phones ringing off the hook. We had the feeling the PCTV broadcast also drew a spike in viewership. The message got through: We The People do not want to approve (because they cannot afford) another single penny in raises, not because they have anything against public workers but because they know that in the end, they will have to foot the bill, and baby, they’re just tapped out. Financially, they’re running on fumes.

Bianchi brought in his hired gun, consultant Rachel Brown, CCP — certified compensation professional — of Stone Consulting Inc. of Medfield, to make his case. More on her in a moment.

The mayor led off the proceedings with an opening statement. Looking more nervous than he usually does, Bianchi spoke. Like the elongating wooden proboscis of a certain beloved marionette, the mayor’s tale could be classified as a whopper.

Bianchi referred to the city-side compensation package being “as low as it is,” so low, he insisted, that it has prevented the city from hiring competent people. Right. So low, he  must have listened to Chubby Checker limbo records on a continual tape loop. Right.

“How loooow can you go?”

Think about what Bianchi was saying here. He said that because the pay is “so low,” the city can’t hire or retain competent workers. Talk about a vote of confidence for every current city hall worker, straight from the commander in chief! Of course, Bianchi avoided to obvious rejoinder: Where is the guarantee that high pay equals great workers? It’s not there. The only correlation in the Pittsfield public sector seems to be the higher the pay, the lower the performance.

The mayor then talked mystically about a brainless workplace coefficient dreamed up by psychologists (reason enough right there to reject out of hand): the mysterious “organization hygiene factor.” This ridiculous term refers to “what creates health in an organization[al]” workplace. Again, think about what the mayor’s words mean. Bianchi tied “a person’s self-worth” to the amount of money they make.

Uh, time out!!

The last person I want working for me is someone whose self-esteem and internal confidence level depends solely or even primarily on the amount of their paycheck. It’s “important,” the mayor said, “for people to feel they are valued.” These are interesting words for a man who has created a workplace of doom, gloom, political revenge, and retribution, at least judging by those city-side workers brave enough to speak (anonymously, natch). Too many who work for the city feel they are valued in the same way a master values his cotton pickers.

——- 000 ——-

Message to Mayor Bianchi: Getting people to “feel good” about the workplace can’t be reduced solely to a paycheck. Getting them to feel good has much more to do with the quality of the leadership they are getting, and for an accurate read on that, just look clearly and honestly into the mirror, Mr. Mayor.

The mayor ignored a simple reality: The taxpayers of the city can’t afford to spend another dime on salaries. It’s too bad, for THE PLANET agrees, the city side (the workers bees more than the department heads) has been shafted by the exorbitant pay hike granted year after year to the school department. Too bad, but this pay hike largely ignored the workers bees in favor of Bianchi and his managers, plus all exempt employees.

And who are the exempt employees? How is that determined? How many of them are there? Few answers were forthcoming. It became clear as the meeting dragged into its third hour that the consultant and her client were running around, aimlessly, not having done a good job of explaining the pay hike or, more important, its rationale. Finance director Sue Carmel spoke. City personnel director John DeAngelo spoke. Both babbled incoherently in pickled tongues. They danced. They bobbed. They weaved, and not well, like Dr. Johnson‘s proverbial bear trying to stand on its hind legs.

Just one look at managers like Carmel and DeAngelo, and you can see that competency has nothing to do with a pay check. They make it easy to see why the city is getting close to flat on its back.

In a perfect world, it would be nice to give everyone what they want, but Pittsfield, in case you haven’t noticed, lies on the edge of of a monstrous poverty that every day creeps closer, where the cheats’ deep curses grow louder, terrorizing the rapidly vanishing good, decent citizens left, who are being asked to render more to Caesar than they can possibly give.

——- 000 ——-

Consultant Rachel Brown exuded all the warmth and congeniality of a thriving mold colony growing in a forgotten and unrefrigerated jar of applesauce. She mouthed what the mayor wanted to hear, and it was clear to THE PLANET that she did that job well — that job being to produce a report telling her client exactly what her client wanted to hear.

Brown’s points were all but obliterated by her persona, by which we mean the public shell that she put on as surely as she did the maroon skirt that was a tad too short for the no-longer-youthful legs that protruded from its circumference.

As Brown spoke, she alternately closed and fluttered her eyes, an unnerving facial tic that we remember seeing regularly in Richard Nixon, especially as the heat from Watergate became oppressive and he kept telling lie after lie. As for body language, how about “wound tight?” With pursed lips, she bites off words more than articulates them.

OK. THE PLANET has much more on this story. For now, call the whole thing a qualified win for the forces of truth, justice, and the PLANETarian way.

————————————————————————————-

“There’s a great hot desert, south of the border. If you don’t have the water, you better not go. Taquila won’t get you across that desert to Evangelia in Old Mexico.” — Hoyt Axton, “Evangelina.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.