Rich Rising's Rising Riches--Part 1: If Cass gets his way, the budget will include another increase for the city manager

At Council’s February 7th meeting, Mayor Cass rounded up the votes he needed to grant City Manager Rising a 5% salary increase, retroactive to January 2006. The resolution authorizing the raise wasn’t originally on the agenda, was presented after a lengthy executive session, late at night, and was false. You can read it here. Cass and his majority told the public that a performance evaluation had been completed and indicated that a 5% retroactive raise was warranted. That’s just false.

Councilors Capraro, Augustine, Espenscheid and Nyrop voted against the raise on the grounds that Rising’s performance evaluation had never been completed. Not only is a yearly performance evaluation the right thing to do for the public, and for Rising, but it is a contractual obligation (see our June 4th post on this issue).

But Cass continued to spread fiction in the City, with a letter to the editor indicating that the evaluation had been completed. Even the Finger Lakes Times, that usually bends over backwards to give Cass the benefit of the doubt, wrote an editorial about the problems with the vote. Councilor Cosentino confirmed it in his own letter to the editor. He stated that Rising’s evaluation hadn’t been completed, but that he didn’t care because everyone knows what a great job the Manager does. We think that’s debatable, but whether you like the job that’s being done or not, the evaluation matters.

Cass also allowed Councilor Paul D’Amico to vote for the raise, even though D’Amico had just joined council and therefore wasn’t able to comment on Rising’s 2005 job performance. We thought D’Amico should abstain, not only because he had no basis on which to vote, but because he could have avoided unnecessary political controversy. But D’Amico was all too eager to get on Rising’s good side, and cast the deciding vote for the raise.

Because that last raise covered Rising’s performance in 2005, Cass wanted to turn right around and ramp up for yet another raise covering Rising’s 2006 performance. At a special meeting of council held later in February, Cass pledged to follow a schedule for Rising’s next round of evaluation/raise. Council was supposed complete the evaluation in May at a special meeting devoted solely to discussion of the individual evaluations. Don’t take our word for it, read it for yourself here.

Well, it’s September and the evaluation has still not been completed. Individual evaluation forms have been completed (see the form we used), but we haven’t moved on to the second step. It was supposed to be discussed in June, then it was put off to July, then August. We aren’t on the bandwagon for another raise for Rising, but come on, Cass needs to get his Mayoral act together, for once, and get this done! Council has a meeting Wednesday, September 19^th. The day after the Mayoral primary. Perhaps then it will be ‘safe’ for the Mayor and his voting bloc to put forward their proposal for yet another raise?