Anderson compensates employees well beyond wages, budget shows

Looking strictly at employee salaries and benefits, Anderson is no Bell.

Located smack dab in the middle of a metropolitan polyglot referred to as Greater Los Angeles, Bell, Calif., first appeared on the nation's radar screen in June when the Los Angeles Times reported that the city was paying exorbitant amounts of money to its city manager, police chief and six of its seven city council members.

With a population under 40,000 — or nearly four times the 11,000 residents attributed to Anderson, Bell's taxpayers were paying City Manager Robert Rizzon more than $787,000 per year, Police Chief Randy Adams $457,000 annually and most of the city council close to $100,000 each, the Times reported.

By way of comparison, Anderson pays its City Manager, Dana Shigley, a total wages and benefits package of $174,966, according to the city's own budget document for the 2010-11 fiscal year that began July 1.

Police Chief Dale Webb's total package costs Anderson taxpayers $192,804 per year and the city's four council members receive $600 per year while the Mayor, who typically serves a two-year term, receives $900 per year, the budget states.

Council members, including the Mayor, also receive mileage reimbursement for some meetings attended on behalf of the city. They may also be reimbursed up to $1,017 per month for actual insurance costs, explained Shigley.

In all, only two Anderson employees — the city manager and police chief — actually take home more than $100,000 in wages. However, the city provides a fully-paid insurance plan that annually averages out at $13,000 per employee, the budget shows.

City taxpayers also pick up the employer's costs for each employee's FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) payroll tax, which ranges from a low of $1,365 for the city's accountant to a high of $9,096 for the City Manager, according to budget documents obtained by the Valley Post.

Perhaps the most expensive benefit, however, is the city taxpayer's contribution to the California Public Employee Retirement System or PERS made on behalf of each city employee.

This payment ranges from a high of $57,393 per year for Police Chief Dale Webb to a low of $8,783 annually for an Account Clerk II (office secretary) taking home $31,065 per year or about $18 per hour for a full-time position.

Until recently, city taxpayers have paid both the employer's share of PERS and the employee's share.

This practice, although common in city, county and state government throughout California, is rarely practiced in the private sector, where employees are much more inclined to contribute out of their own wages, usually before taxes are calculated, towards the company-financed retirement plan.

Anderson officials routinely compare their salaries to other government entities within the county as well as on a regional and same-size city basis, Shigley said.

However, when it comes to recruiting employees, Anderson must compete with everyone else, thus making it hard to hire qualified applicants, she noted.

For example, a job at Anderson's waste-water treatment plant went unfilled for many months because the city could not match what other municipalities and public utility districts were willing to pay, Shigley said.

"These employees have to have a certain level of training and state certification, so there are very few people who hold the appropriate state license for a treatment plant of our size and type," Shigley noted.

"We sent out a job announcement and an application to several thousand people who were on the state license list and we received five applications, none of whom were qualified for the position," she said.

A second mailing with a higher salary range to the same list of potential applicants drew no responses.

"We are now training someone internally and helping them get the certification they need, but it is anybody's guess how long they will stay once they see what kind of salaries other cities are offering for those skills and certified training," Shigley said.

By contrast, however, Anderson really got lucky when Jeff Kiser came looking for a job as Director of Public Works.

Kiser, who left the California Department of Transportation where he supervised up to 250 people, went first to private industry and worked at Omni Means Inc. in Redding to get some broader experience.

Eventually, while working on several projects for the City of Anderson, Kiser decided to take a pay cut and work for the city, Shigley said.

"He is doing a bang-up job for us," she noted.

Comparing salaries with other government agencies can lead to a dangerous trap, however, Shigley noted.

"We also have to look at the community. Our salaries are a lot of money to the people who live and work in this community," Shigley readily admits.

Most notably, according to the California Labor Market Information Division's own data for Shasta County, also known as the Redding Metro Area, 15.6 percent of the area's 85,400 residents were unemployed as of July, leaving 13,300 out of work.

Shasta County ranks 38th out of California's 58 counties in terms of unemployment.

The state's figures were released August 20 and have not been seasonally adjusted, noted Sheila Stock, a consultant for the Employment Development Department.

Stock also supplied the Valley Post with Occupational Employment and Wage Data from the first quarter of 2010, the most recent data available.

That data shows that of the 61,480 people working non-farm jobs in Shasta County in May 2009, the average hourly wage was $19.73 while the average annual wage was $41,049. Calculations of the mean or average are correct plus or minus 2.5 percent, a number that denotes a relatively high rate of validity, Stock said.

Those 3,030 individuals deemed to be in management positions — including all government workers so classified — had an average hourly wage of $44.96 and annual wages of $93,526, Stock's data shows.

In the protective services occupation, with 1,520 individuals so classified, the average hourly wage was $24.12 while the average annual salary was $50,178. This category includes all city police, sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers as well as private security guards.

In the private security guard category, with 350 employees reported, the average hourly wage dropped significantly to $13.01 while the average annual salary dropped to $27,069.

Of the county's 11,370 office and administrative support workers, the average hourly rate was $15.32 with the average annual salary pegged at $31,876. This category includes all city and county secretaries as well.

Looking at all the comparative data can quickly become a daunting task, Anderson City Manager Dana Shigley admits.

"It's challenging to look at the whole organization. We also have to look at the community," she said.

"What I am trying to do is think long term so that we can sustain our pay and benefits in the long run. I'm pretty content with all of our salaries. In terms of our peers of same size, we are in pretty good shape. We do tend to lose employees to retirement, but at least we are not losing them to Chico or Red Bluff," Shigley commented.

In defense of the city's 59 employees, Shigley noted that they provide a lot of services for a small group of people. In 2009, the city's $5.1 million budget included 65 people, she noted. Retirements and voluntary departures account for the difference, she said.

"We do a lot for a real small city. We have a lot of really good programs and a lot of really talented people who provide good work for their pay," Shigley said. "The unfortunate part of that whole City of Bell fiasco is it has cast a poor light on public servants," Shigley said.