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March 07, 2008
Time Is Money... But How Much?
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| Asterisks: * used General Services Director salary ** salaries are low for position, probably represent only a portion of annual salary *** public safety used 62.5% benefits, others used 50% **** these positions had two entries in salary database, I added them together although they probably relate to different people holding the position. |
| Image: Estimated cost in salary and benefits for
an hour of a City Council meeting. Two posts back I complained that the City Council wasted time and money debating how to regulate 30 pedicab bicycles. They spent about an hour discussing this small group of people when the city has other more pressing issues that could be discussed. The city manager, Dave Burkland, suggested regulating pedicabs would be a waste of staff time. I used a little hyperbole stating that the discussion probably cost taxpayers a few thousand dollars and stated that a million dollars worth of staff salaries were dedicated to the topic. I thought it would be a good idea to actually do a little math and see if I was correct, or way off-base. So I embarked on a math problem to figure out how much salary and benefits are paid for each hour of a council meeting. I took the staff positions listed on the "council agenda with staff reports" cover sheet and assumed those were the staff members that would be required to be at a council meeting. Using the 2006 salaries I calculated the benefits for each position and divided the pay + benefits by 2080 to get the hourly cost (2080 = 52 weeks X 40 hours). Beyond what's covered above and the asterisks I made a couple of assumptions. First, I assumed that only about 3/4 of the city staff listed actually need to show up at each meeting. That could be wrong, but I don't know what the policy is. The second assumption I made is that the salaries did not go up since 2006. In all likelyhood all salaries probably bumped up by 2-5% for the merit pay raise management gets annually. After all of the figurin' it looks like I was a little bit off on the numbers I threw out previously. The annual salaries and benefits of staff at a City Council meeting is likely between $2 million and $3 million. That's quite a bit higher than I thought. The cost of 1 hour of salaries and benefits is not a few thousand dollars, but is probably closer to $1,000-$1,500. A very important point is that you can't save money by having shorter or fewer meetings. You can't save money by having fewer staff at the meetings. The annual costs are fixed. However, the hourly cost of staff for a Council meeting is a great indicator of how wasting that time on pointless discussions is a waste of taxpayer money. This is no different than if you were to call a lawyer or accountant knowing his hourly rate was $1,000. You would make absolutely sure you were prepared for the discussion and you would only discuss issues that warranted the $1,000/hour rate. I'll be looking at these meetings a little differently knowing the magnitude of the staff salaries, and the hourly cost to have them there. |
| Spotlight: Who let the dogs out.. who let the dogs out... Dog attacks squad car and destroys bumper. Try that on my '64 Galaxie. And the Beat moves on Chico Beat postpones print edition, moves out of office, and moves into post office box. Maybe not a post office box, I can't tell if Tom G. is kidding in his piece. This could have been avoided had they linked to Commission Impossible on their blog page. Why can't we be friends The Democratic National Committee precluded delegates from Florida and Michigan from being counted because those states held their contests too early. Both states were won by Clinton. Will the DNC choose to disenfranchise those state's voters, or change the rules after the contest has started. Not good options. In the 2000 presidential election Democrats wanted to change the rules of the contest after it was underway. |
|
 CI Challenge: Can you guess what it is? Winner: Hep cat Sean Baber backed up by the Big Lebowski. See comments below for the answer. |
Posted by Lon at March 7, 2008 05:19 AM
Comments
500 . . . .very nice.
It makes me think about how many people in Chico derive some sense of self worth by telling people how long they've lived here. Now us CI readers can do the same:
"Hey dude, I've been readin' CI since post 123."
"Oh yeah, well I've been reading since the very first post!"
"Dude, you're a god!"
As far as your calculations of wasted City staff time, do you think your wife will look at the 500 graphic at the bottom of the post and wonder how much "family staff time" you've wasted with CI? I know mine would.
BTW, I'm looking forward to the festivities tomorrow morning. I'll be there with kids in tow.
Posted by: rainman at March 7, 2008 07:44 AM
Rainman,
First, I commend you on using "dude" when describing CI readers. We are some of the hep-ist cats and cattets around.
My wife and I have had many conversations about the purpose, need, and value of time I spend writing this blog. Particularly regarding Jessica Alba. I'm not quite at Vallejo yet, but I'm on my way.
Tomorrow should be fun. I'll be announcing my run for Assistant City Manager there.
Lon
Posted by: Lon at March 7, 2008 09:17 AM
CIC - Now I get it. Dario Franchitti.
Posted by: Sean Baber at March 7, 2008 10:25 AM
Lon,
I dont agree with any of the above. The wages reflect what it takes to get and retain quality professionals.
I think a better argument is... do we have the right person doing the job. Because doing a bad job has a lot more cost associated to it compared to the wage.
As for using activity based costing to find a sum value of council meeting time and then ranking access based on value. are you proposing that poor people have little or no access ?
Also some planning staff is underpaid for the abuse they put up from people like me.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Trolinder at March 7, 2008 11:06 AM
Mike,
I don't have any idea where the "poor people" comment comes from.
City staff only have a specific amount of time that they can work during the year. They have to sleep and eat and tuck their kids in. That's one of the reasons that Council meetings are time limited.
We pay the same cost whether they meet or don't meet. So the whole notion of an hourly rate is pretty much a fabrication on my part.
However, as I pointed out, you have a couple of million dollars in annual salaries/benefits sitting around discussing the important things to our community. It would seem that some form of topic triage would make sense when time is limited. When Dave Burkland suggested that spending staff time developing regulations for pedicabs was a waste of time I thought he was correct. There are other pressing issues that should be in front of the council.
The Art Commission workplan seemed to get less attention than the pedicabs. They spend hundreds of thousands of tax dollars. The change in location of the police station discussion came at the end of a long meeting and was not detailed. We may spend $40 million on that facility. We've allotted $2.4 million to plan a facility at the other location. This should have been a long and detailed discussion.
The pedicab non-issue could have been handled in about 5 minutes.
Lon
Posted by: Lon at March 7, 2008 11:32 AM
Isn't it the job of the mayor to manage the council deliberations and how much time is spent on issues?
I thought at the council meetings the city staff were at the mercy of the council direction?
Is it fair to bring the city administration into question?
Triage sounds like opportunity for preferential treatment.
Posted by: tj at March 7, 2008 12:27 PM
Lon,
I agree. I didn't realize we had a pedicab problem. I thought we had a DUI problem. Take care of the drunk drivers and we won't have to worry about them running over bikes.
On a happier subject, I took the kids out to Sherwood yesterday and my 6 yr old was definitely into it. He's kind of a slow, speed golfer though. He heaves his disc all of 20 ft and immediately runs after it for another toss while I try my best not to plunk him in the back of the noggin.
P.S. If my CIC guess is correct, I'll have to give an assist to the Dude for highlighting your 500th post.
Posted by: Sean at March 7, 2008 12:32 PM
Sean,
My kid still remembers the time I hit him in the head with a disc. He was 4, it was about a 6 foot toss, I felt terrible.
Dude gets credit and your guess was correct.
Lon
Posted by: Lon at March 7, 2008 12:39 PM
To quote Jeff Lebowski: "The Dude abides".
Posted by: rainman at March 7, 2008 12:45 PM
TJ,
Uh-oh, am I getting the downtown-double-team again?
You made the same point I made. Time is valuable, and it's not always being managed well in the council chamber. At least it wasn't a couple of days ago, in my opinion. How valuable is the time? I put some numbers on it today.
Is highlighting the amount we pay the managerial staff somehow calling their performance into question? Or are the numbers so big that people just assume that was my intent?
I would like to see preferential treatment. I would like to see the items that have the most impact on our budget be given preference of time and prompt decision making at the council. I would like for other issues, excepting safety, to take a back seat until the finances are figured out.
There are of course immutable rules of public process that allow everyone to have a say. But as you pointed out, the agenda order and meeting direction is determined by the mayor. Not to give Andy Holcombe too hard of a time, but as I watched it I just thought "you've got to be kidding, we're ignoring the budget for this?". And then Bertagna said what I was thinking.
Scott Gruendl even pointed out that moving down the pedicab regulation road was an example of the nanny-state. The only issue I had with Gruendl was that he said he wanted to "do something" as opposed to nothing. I would have gone with the "nothing". It was a waste of time and money.
And then to see two much more important topics get rushed through was a shame.
Lon
BTW: this is comment 3300.
Posted by: Lon at March 7, 2008 12:56 PM
Lon, congratulations on reaching 500!
You have more articles now than the Chico Beat. Probably because you don't take off for weeks surrounding the holidays.
Posted by: Anthony at March 7, 2008 12:59 PM
Anthony,
I might have more paying customers than the Beat considering the article linked above.
Lon
Posted by: Lon at March 7, 2008 01:05 PM
I think a better example of what your talking about from the same council meeting is the Park View Apartments.
What happened to our architectural review process.. that council memeber Gruendl needed to repair the design in a council meeting.
Council should depend on management to process solutions and problems in a way that brings the best possible result for approval.
Your going to have to fix a much deeper problem before the one at council can be solved.
The best corporate leaders I know keep tabs on the little things as well as the big. forcing them to look at the budget woes by clearing the way of little things isnt going to fix the problem.
Its time for our city manager to manage
Its time for our planning director to direct
Its time for everyone to earn the money they make
Mike
Posted by: Mike Trolinder at March 7, 2008 02:18 PM
Congrats on 500 Lon! Keep up the great blog, I always look forward to it, well, most of the time.
D.Erickson
Posted by: Duke Erickson at March 7, 2008 06:40 PM
Dude,
The dudes and dudets down at the city currently charge roughly $110ish dollars an hour to do alot of planning and other such dudical jobs. This is called real time billing. Considering that there are usually 1, 2 or 3 staff dudes/dudets working on any given item I am sure that atleast 10-15 hours of staff dude time had to be used up in the pedi-cam debockle?
Now I have spent 15mins reading and writing on this 500 and that time I calculate at $1.23.
Congrats on sherwood!!!
Posted by: Jason Bougie at March 9, 2008 07:35 AM
Lon,
Notice the comments here about Parkview apartments and the current topic
mike
Posted by: Mike Trolinder at May 10, 2008 02:38 PM