My suggestion earlier this week—if candidates for Greensboro’s city manager job are still in town, hide all copies of this week’s Rhino, where they’ll note Coliseum Director Matt Brown is —and always will be –top dawg on the city’s salary list.
We’re always concerned about the ‘messages’ our city sends and whether or not those ‘messages’ will attract quality people to live and work here. So I have to wonder what kind of message it sends when the director of an entertainment venue makes more money than the city manager, the police chief, the city attorney….well, everybody.
By the same token, whoever gets the job can count on a fat raise after a while, given the trends:
The Greensboro city salary list is both shocking and upsetting. It is shocking to see how many high level city employees have received generous salary increases in the past year and upsetting to think that the City Council took money from people who are struggling to make ends meet in this economy and handed it over to people who were already being overpaid for the jobs they were doing.
In the private sector the economy is still really tough. People, through no fault of their own, are out of work or working at jobs far below the salary and status they held in 2008. Those in the private sector lucky enough to have jobs are not looking at huge raises. Many have seen either their salaries, their benefits or both reduced.
Three prime examples — Interim City Manager Denise Turner Roth — who is silent about whether not she’s applied for the position permanently—-got a $44k raise, while Assistant City Manager Mike Speedling got a $28k raise. Associate City Attorney Jamiah Waterman got a 50k bump for holding the reins while the City Council searched for a permanent replacement for Rita Danish, who left after she started taking heat for not having a North Carolina law license.
