City Manager gives/gets $36,000 Pay Raise

As the Executive Director of the Big Bear Lake Improvement Agency, Big Bear Lake City Manager Jeff Mathieu authored the Agenda report recommending the Improvement Agency pay the City Manager (himself) $36,000 in addition to his City Managers Pay.

Our City Manager is already The Improvement Agency Director's Boss (Lyle Haynes) and the Executive Director of the Improvement Agency itself. The Agenda Report in the BBL City Council's Regular Meeting Agenda (8/24/09 item 1.9) states the additional tasks Mr. Mathieu might undertake for the additional pay. This would certainly leave the Improvement Agency Director free to ....? I'm not sure just what. In my opinion, most everything listed as additional duties for the City Manager, one would expect to be done as either the Director of the Improvement Agency or possibly as the boss of a Director of the Agency.

In a recent Big Bear Grizzly poll, it seems the majority of the folks that responded thinks that our City Government is out of touch with the community. This kind of unanimous spending by the City Council would appear to give that opinion a lot of credence, as many folks are doing more than ever just to keep a job, never mind the lavish increase in lifestyle for just showing up to work.

I don't have a real problem with the City Manager. He is entitled to everything he successfully negotiates. I do have a problem with the lack of representation on the taxpayers behalf in these type of negotiations and the lack of measurable goals set to the salaries we pay our City Employees. These are property tax dollars set aside for real redevelopment that we are currently slathering about City Hall. With no set goals or even a vague sense of direction on what we are setting out to accomplish within our Redevelopment Districts, there is no way to justify the expenditure, or determine if we are getting what we are paying for.

Here is the Grizzly's take on the pay raise. http://tinyurl.com/l3f38p

Here is the Agenda. Scroll to page 188 for the specific language in the pay raise. http://tinyurl.com/nvosna