I can hardly wait for the day that everyone in the media has to post their income tax returns online, so that we’re on an equal footing with government employees.
In the meantime, for those of you who love this stuff, here is the employment contraact for our recently hired deputy city manager from Chicago who, it appears, won’t have the opportunity to flee back to the Windy City any time soon to help out with the Olympics since, as the whole world knows, Chicago got the least votes of the four contenders today.
As you’ll note, Sadhu Johnston declined the car-lease allowance, presumably because he’ll be riding his bike around the city every day, as he has been in Chicago. I see no excessive holiday provisions, unless I’m missing something.
To save you the trouble of checking with the city’s financial statements, he will be making a little less than the recently departed deputy city managers. For the 2008 year, Jody Andrews (who quit early this year) got $208,790. James Ridge (who quit later this year) got $231,315.
The deputy will also make less than the head of engineering (Tom Timm, 224,00) or legal (Francie Connell, $225,000) or what the head of Olympic operations made before he quit (Dave Rudberg, $233,000).
15 responses so far ↓
1 Mary // Oct 2, 2009 at 7:49 pm
the really sad thing is that the opportunity to contribute didn’t go to one of the talented, bright, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable- about- how- this City/city- works young people at the Hall.
2 observer // Oct 3, 2009 at 9:57 am
I gotta agree with Mary on this one.
No slag to Sadhu who sounds great, but the City really should start looking internally at the bright young staff before even more of them leave.
There is a lot of untapped sustainability know-how that is being ignored by Council and the administration.
3 Blaffergassted // Oct 3, 2009 at 10:03 am
Does this help?
…
http://www.mediaunion.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Part-A-Granville-Square-final.pdf
4 K. Briffa // Oct 3, 2009 at 4:02 pm
and so we have another greenier-than-thou paid up member of the Church of Global Warming in a position to inflict his religion on us.
Just in time for the end of this latest environmental industry scare campaign that has cost so much money and prevented so much prosperity.
http://tinyurl.com/y8bothm
Every penny we pay him is a waste of money.
5 Bill Lee // Oct 3, 2009 at 5:41 pm
re : http://francesbula.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/JOHNSTONCONTRACT.pdf (5 pages 185 Kb)
That is a long sentence blacked out about his vacation before he comes. Would it be several months? I’m trying to put several words to fit the blackout.
And he gives up a car allowance of $687 a month equivalent. He could use it to buy a bike a month and then give it away to the needy (which is much of the eastern city).
I hope that gets his rain gear early for the days of downpours (actually rather few if you ride only in the early morn and late evening) There are hourly measurements of rainfall that can show the urban island effect on rainfall.
6 Urbanismo // Oct 4, 2009 at 4:01 am
Off on vacation! No car allowance! Window dressing!
What is all this hyper-activity about a “green” city?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzSzItt6h-s
It sure as hell isn’t about the urban environment!
7 rf // Oct 5, 2009 at 10:54 am
Allan Garr had some pretty interesting anecdotes on the bureacracy overload at city hall.
15 different technology helpdesks!
Average sick days is 16 days per year. And that’s just the average! That means there are a bunch of people who are sick for a month or more(20 days)!! Blatant abuse.
Can you imagine how a person would be viewed in the private sector if they were sick for 3 weeks of every year?
8 Blaffergassted // Oct 5, 2009 at 10:57 am
RF – they’d be the boss, right!
9 Darcy McGee // Oct 5, 2009 at 11:06 am
Honestly, I’m not sure why anybody anywhere pays “moving expenses” for a dude who’s making $200,000+ a year.
I understand the need to attract talented people, but why not attract talented unselfish people instead. The guy’s making $200,000+ a year and moving’s going to cost…what…$2,000 at most? That’s less than the NET of one paycheque.
I hope he makes a charitable donation to offset it. It would be the decent thing to do. There’s people who have nowhere to move too, or from.
10 rf // Oct 5, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Assuming the guy has a house, it could be as much as $20k to ship all the furniture + flights. Moving services aren’t cheap and he’s basically going cross-country. Probably costs even more to go cross-border as well.
I would also think they would need to take extra care to transport Johnston’s special machine that converts his farts into sunshine.
11 Joe Just Joe // Oct 5, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I’m not trying to defend the payment of moving expenses, but if you think they are only $2K then you must be able to fit all your stuff into a suitcase.
Try between $10-15K for a cross country move, airline ticket, moving truck crossing the border on a 4 day trip, storage fees, rental for first month until you find a place, it all adds up very fast.
12 Darcy McGee // Oct 5, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I moved a sizable one bedroom apartment full of furniture for $1,500 from Toronto to Vancouver. That was a few years ago, but even if it’s doubled…add to that a couple of plane tickets and you’re done.
Storage fees? Because you’re not able or willing to find a place before you move? How is that my problem?
Anyway, all viable arguements. Cross-border may cost more it’s true, but really…given that America makes it so hard for Canadians to work in the U.S. perhaps we should have found someone already on this side of the border.
The real problem I have is that this is public money. Private employers can do whatever they want: it’s private money. This is public money, and I have to think it could have been spent more wisely.
13 Darcy McGee // Oct 5, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Incidentally, part of my point here is this. According to Statistics Canada:
” the top 10% [of Vancouver families] had $205,200 on average”
that’s annual income.
So this person’s SINGLE salary is roughly equivalent to the average income of the TOP 10% of Vancouver’s families. More with the cash he’ll be receiving in lieu of the leased car.
And we need to pay moving costs?
Our societies’ priorities are screwed up, to say the least.
14 Urbanismo // Oct 6, 2009 at 4:55 am
The proof of the pudding is in the eating!
And just now Vancouver doesn’t taste very good.
So if Vancouver’s feel-good, control-freak Hallistas strut their stuff in SF, Seattle and Portland then it is encumbent upon us to call them . . .
C$200k and goodies! And from Chicago of all places! We must have rocks in our head . . .
15 NG // Oct 7, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I must protest about rf’s comment on sick time and “Help Desks”. I find your comments twisted and without the detail required to make a knowledgeable conclusion.
For Sick time, the CUPE 15 inside staff do not have Short Term or Long Term Disability. What they do have is a certain amount of sick hours per year that accumulates over their career. If they are sick, they take a day. If they are deathly ill, in a car accident, need surgery of any type they take many days. WHEN YOU RUN OUT YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK, NO PAY! If you have cancer and need treatment and are off for a 6 months then it goes towards the City’s overall average. I suspect the private sector stops counting when short term disability kicks in.
As for the 15 “help desks”, that is ridiculous. There are 15 separate support groups covering both tier 2 and tier 3 calls. They receive help calls from a centralized help desk. I know in my department, we have approximately 200 computers per support staff. Think about it like the guy in your building that fixes the major computer problems of that building or site. Would propose a pool of people that sits at a central location, has to travel there when a call comes in, does not know the lay out of the building, people, specialized software ,systems in place, or the business process they use.
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