Ah yes—salary season over at the alt-weekly Rhino times—meaning for the next three weeks we’ll be treated with the salary list of local public employees.
First up —City of Greensboro– where—to no one’s surprise–coliseum complex director Matt Brown is still the highest-paid employee with a salary of $288,445. Next up is City Manager Jim Westmoreland with a salary of $200,324. According to the Rhino, Brown received an $18,000 raise this year—ostensibly because he is taking on responsibility for managing the still-under-construction downtown performing arts center.
Rhino editor John Hammer analyzes:
The most blatant example of the salary issues in city government, however, is right at the very top of the salary list, and it’s worse this year than last year. The highest paid employee on the City of Greensboro payroll is not the city manager in charge of running the entire city, it’s the not the police chief in charge of keeping the citizens safe, it’s not the water resources director who is in charge of providing clean drinking water and cleaning the wastewater to levels where it doesn’t pollute our streams. No, it is Coliseum Director Matt Brown, who is in charge of entertainment. Brown is paid $288,000 a year, which is $88,000 more than his boss, City Manager Jim Westmoreland, who is paid $200,000 a year.
But what is interesting is that last year Brown made $270,000 and Westmoreland $191,000. So Brown received an $18,000 raise and Westmoreland a $9,000 raise – the two largest raises we could find of any city employees this year, but the raises increased the difference between Westmoreland and his employee.
As they say, the rich get richer.
Next week—salaries for Guilford County Schools.
