Alameda City Manager Salary - Perspective

I need ambien...Anyway, I just read Action Alameda's post where they normalized the data reported by SF Chronicle on what City Managers get paid in the Bay area.

Personally, if someone is doing a kick-ass job, by all means, pay them what they're worth. What? Here's a perspective.

Palo Alto rocks. It is in so many ways a wonderful place to live. So much so, that I can't afford to live there. But that's OK. I'm not the jealous type. So their City Manager gets a $1.5 million dollar stipend for a home there (that the city gets back when he/she moves and sells it). Most would just be appalled and decry the evilness of the disparity. But look, if the City Manager is responsible for making Palo Alto the one place everyone wants to live and no one's home is decreasing in value and they have plenty of funds to cover city functions and one of the best school systems around, then it's fair. Pay the people what they're worth, period. Make them earn it, fire them if they suck, but it's OK to incentivize them and have all the weapons in your arsenal to get the best of the best. I want our City Manager to be actively recruited by Google. This is how America should work (oh pipe down Democrats, I'm a registered Democrat and voted for Barack.)

So, the chart is interesting. Alameda falls right around the middle. Alameda City Manager earns about $285K a year and there are about 74K of us. I'm not sure I agree with comparing it to purely population but whatever, I'm OK with this as long as the City Manager is killing it. I don't even know who that is actually (you see know why you're wasting your time reading this? I honestly don't matter much). I know something about an interim City Manager in place but I don't know the details.

So in my wee little blogosphere universe, I'm pretending to be CEO of Alameda (I'd be just a HORRIBLE CEO...), and this CEO wants her minions to be nothing but the A team. I want them going out there making every Bay Area resident just dying to get across our little bridge to get a glimpse of our heaven. Our houses are bigger than most of those in Palo Alto. We have a beach and boats. It takes us 20 minutes to get to the city on a scenic ferry ride. We have a freaking awesome view of the city. You want to be us. You want to live in our houses, shop in our shops and go to our schools because we are heaven on earth. Do what it takes, brand us that way, use all creative (but ethical) means of making every Alameda crazy proud to be here and never wanting to leave. Keep that hometown feel, that's great branding. Everyone wants to live on Birdwell Island (Clifford the Big Red Dog's home...that place is just dreamy). And keep the best and the brightest here too. The money will follow. And by all means, make it so random moms aren't compelled to blog about the city. In fact, during elections, people should forget there even is an election and there should be no one running because it's just running so swimmingly. Like we tell our kids - "If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly." I'm sure we stole that from some place but whatever.

My husband is right, Alameda is so focused on chiseling away at costs but costs are easy. You basically know what they're going to be and can only do so much to get them down. But the sky's the limit if you get creative on how to bring revenue into the city. You won't need to shut down an elementary school to save $304K (that number is ridiculous by the way, I won't get into why here). And all you die hard Alamedans that have been here 20+ years and don't want anything changing - wake up, 1/3 of the island left years ago along with its revenue. It already changed.

(And I'm not talking creative ways of getting revenue like lets fine responsible homeowner $1,500 right before Christmas for failing to get a permit for like-for-like replacement of her windows and do it by stopping the work while there were gaping holes in her house so of course we had to pay. Merry Christmas to you too Grinch. Yup, I'm still bitter. Like-for-like! Why would you need a permit for that? It's not a fire hazard??? Our licensed contractor had never heard of such a thing, paid for half of the fine and decided never to work in Alameda again.)

I'm talking creative revenue that thinks big and beautiful. That Farmer's Market you shut down here on Bay Farm a couple of weekends ago for failing to get their little license that takes 2 months? Don't make them pay $1.5K or whatever it was for their little permit. Make them pay a percentage of their profit and not a crazy amount but enough that makes it so that you want their Farmer's Market to succeed. That steady stream of revenue will be more than $1.5K I promise. I've yet to see a Farmer's Market that brings a town down. Maybe that's not legal, I don't know California is crazy.

Anyway, so that chart would have been even more interesting if it compared how much revenue the city generates. Fine if the City Manager makes x% of total revenue. If you base it just on population, poor little San Jose City Manager gets peanuts and should think about quitting soon. So $285K for a town that is running on red does sound like a lot, unless that person is going to be the next Mark Hurd (no I don't mean that little scandal, I mean, he got into HP, shook things up, took out dead weight and turned things around sometimes while being wildly unpopular).

Anyway, for Politubing sake, here is a snippet of Alameda's interim City Manager Mary Gallant talking about Chuck Corsica Golf Course. (Why 'interim', isn't the City Manager hired by the mayor? I'm not looking it up, I need to sleep)...