Outright Thievery

The pay raises reported in the T&G today are an interesting development. I added up the ones reported specifically in that article, and not counting the City Manager's contractual raise or the City Council and School Committee raises, the total comes up to $179,339.

That's for only eleven people.

It's an average $16,303 annual increase in pay for each of those lucky winners working in our city government. Before their raises, none of those employees are making less than $70,000. Even the so-called "head golf course professional at Green Hill Municipal Golf Course" has a higher annual flow of gravy into his pocket. But, apparently, the City Manager felt it necessary to grace his services with an additional eight thousand four hundred and eighty six bucks a year because, let's face it, "head golf course professionals" certainly lend this city a fine and valuable service every year... whenever the weather's nice enough to play golf.

The really interesting aspect of this whole thing is that we're obviously not privvy to the overall total of non-union raises being given in our city government this year, at least not in that particular article. With the Council and School Committee raises, along with the City Manager's contractual raise, the rest of the unreported raises will most likely bring the total from $179,339 to up around $400k.

That's a very significant number... just about the same amount that the Worcester Regional Research Chest of Drawers has been advocating to be ripped off from the Cable Access Channel for the past couple of years.

So, if we discover that our local cable access channel has been precipitously cut off from that funding, now we can at least be fully aware of exactly how the city determined it could be "best spent" to serve all of us out here who are footing the bill. I'm just waiting to find out whether this is the case or not, because, frankly... it would be outright thievery.