Following this statement are online links to various documents referenced in the Lisa Meyer statement. Readers are encouraged to examine the documents for specific details corroborating her remarks.
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At the last Council meeting on 30 June, it was a matter of record that a member of this Council demanded information about salaries for elected officials of the City of Bryant. While it is obvious to me that this alderman really only wanted information regarding two elected officials, while calling for civility and decorum, my intention this evening will be to provide a more comprehensive snapshot of details than what might have originally been requested.
The response to those questions regarding salaries is not a simple one, but inasmuch as I have gained access to documents that reveal answers to those questions, I will try to break it down for you in the most accessible way possible.
In order to provide some background for those of you who are new to the Council, specifically Mr. Roedel and Mr. Chandler, and for the benefit of the public, we need to flash back to January 2009, when a salary study was commissioned by members of the former Council (which includes all but a few of those seated on the Council tonight.)
This salary study was called JESAP, an acronym for Job Evaluation and Salary Administration Program, authored and licensed by researchers within a company known as the Johanson Group. It was provided for one purpose only -- as a comparative study of salaries paid in other cities of the first class for the sole purpose of providing information to assist the Council in establishing competitive pay for employees and elected officials in order to attract and keep good employees.
Mr. Bruce Johanson, one of the authors of the study, did not intend JESAP to be used as city policy and even said so in a letter to the City of Bryant dated March 25, 2011. (Encl #1) As a matter of common practice, when cities set salaries for elected officials -- and we have only ten -- the Council is supposed to set it by ordinance. JESAP is just supposed to be a guide.
That’s what Bryant used to do. They set the Mayor’s salary by ordinance and if an increase was needed or warranted, they determined the amount of the increase, conducted a roll call vote and if it passed, the Mayor received a raise in pay. Under Arkansas law, the Council may increase the salary of an elected official in term but they cannot decrease the salary unless the sitting elected official requests the reduction.
In January 2009, the Council and the Mayor learned that their salaries were lower than other cities of the first class, and decided to correct that disparity in one bold move.
Public outrage followed in January 2009, when former Alderman Ed Collins, (Encl #2 – CCMM 8 Jan 09) in his first official act as a new Council member, actually made a motion to accept the maximum recommended salaries for elected officials at a time when the economy was sinking across the nation. (Encl #3 – Saline Courier 12 Jan 09)
Others were incensed (Encl #4 – CCSMM 26 Jan 09) that city employees were excluded from these raises, their wages having been frozen. By February 2009, the Finance and Personnel committee felt the heat from the public and recommended tabling the issue for six months.
In the mean time, from February to September 2009, the Mayor, the HR Director and the Council, according to records, devised a document referred to as the “JESAP Compensation Policy” (Encl #5 - CCMM 30 Sep 09). Incredibly, to this day, no such document actually exists under that title, as confirmed by the city attorney. Instead, city officials insist that what actually does exist in the form of another document is titled: “Compensation Policies Generally,” which five department heads in Bryant have sworn in signed affidavits as having never seen before March of this year. (Encl #6 – CPG and Encl #7 – Affidavits)
This previously hidden document basically treats the Mayor and the City Clerk as if they were hired employees instead of elected officials, doing something both odd and unprecedented. It subjects individuals elected to these positions to an entirely inappropriate vetting and evaluation of their perceived skills, based on education attained and what has been described as “previous elective office experience.”
Unlike their unelected counterparts, these are not requirements for employment, since the electorate voted and put them into office, but are evaluations after the fact of an election, used to step around the normal procedure by which increases in pay would be granted -- or as we have learned more recently, denied.
The increases were also made to appear to comply with a policy based on extraneous “qualifications” of an elected official who had already been chosen by voters. And therein lies the rub. It politically insulated the Council from public accountability and fiduciary responsibility in raising its own salaries as well as those of the former mayor and city clerk by making increases appear to be mandated by an outside authority -- JESAP -- when that study had no actual authority. This also insulated the Council from the responsibility of proposing and approving increases.
NO previous mayors in the history of Bryant, as well as our current mayor, could qualify for a pay adjustment for “previous elective office experience” -- except for one, who spent 18 years in the state legislature. And logic tells us that if a change in policy includes a provision that would have benefited only one person, it was clearly written for only one person.
So, having tabled the pay increases in early February 2009, the Council came back in September 2009 with the same increases that the public had vigorously objected to in January, but this time, those increases were brought in under the public radar.
On November 12, 2009, Ordinance No. 2009-24 was introduced in part for the purpose of increasing elected officials’ salaries. (Encl #8 A-D – Ordinances) The Council did all three readings of this ordinance in a single night. This clearly blocked the public from learning the content of the ordinance or from being able to speaking out on it. What a difference six months makes when the public isn't told that something they objected to is back on the table!
1. For the Mayor, a $58,377 salary was hiked to $71,032, a 22% increase actually less than what the Saline Courier reported at the time, which was a sum of $76,700. In addition, it also included a $6000 car allowance and an $1800 expense account. (Encl #9A pay stub)
2. For the City Clerk, a $30,000 salary jumped to $41,101, a 37% increase. (Encl #9B pay stub)
3. And the Council Members did even better -- they gave themselves a 33% pay increase! (Encl #9C – H pay stub)
What did city employees and commission members get? They got NOTHING, not even a cost of living increase in 2009, as these elected officials lined their pockets with our tax money while Bryant watched the economy slide deeper into debt and rising unemployment.
It is at this point of the story that things shift from despicable to outrageous. Having just given themselves and the Mayor a huge salary increase, the Council added insult to injury by making these pay increases RETROACTIVE all the way back to the first of January, 2009.
Let me repeat that! RETROACTIVE to the 1st of January 2009! They called this stunt a "JESAP Clarification," something that would pass by unnoticed and unrecognizable by the general public. (Encl #10 - CCMM 28 Jan 2010)
The former Mayor did all of this by a voice vote. Nothing was recorded in the minutes about a raise, must less RETROACTIVE because after all, it was only a “JESAP clarification.” The only way this was found and exposed was by listening to the actual recordings of the meeting provided under a FOIA request.
The Council members retroactively soaked this City for $2,080 EACH -- a total of $16,640. The former City Clerk went home with a tidy $7,500 check as a result of two separate increases from those policy mechanisms I mentioned earlier. And the former Mayor pocketed a whopping $13,000 over the course of his own carefully concealed three increases, based on policy mechanisms from which only he, among many mayors, could have possibly benefited.
So let’s summarize at this point: These ten individuals, as a result of three surreptitious readings in one Council meeting, walked off with approximately $40,000 in taxpayers’ money, all while imposing a freeze on city employees’ pay, all done quietly within a single meeting to escape public detection, using deliberately tortured semantics to cover up what had happened in Council minutes.
And now, one very angry alderman has confirmed that when “the mayor of Bryant’s salary” was increased, it was not set for the position. Remember, only one man -- with 18 years of legislative experience -- could “qualify” for that salary. With a new mayor in place, this alderman has brought back the policy mechanism as a weapon to not only deny her the salary paid to the previous mayor, but to suggest that she was a criminal for trying to claim it!
He has made the claim that she was not “qualified” for the sum of $71,032 paid to her predecessor. What did he say on January 12, 2009, in reference to “the mayor of Bryant’s salary” when the proposed amount was $76,700?
“This isn’t Larry Mitchell’s salary,” he responded. “This is the mayor of Bryant’s salary. Whoever comes in later to be mayor is the one that is going to look at this. If I was going to run for mayor and I saw what mayors in other towns were making, I would be embarrassed.”
Did he forget that in January of this year, after the new mayor took office, he and the council unanimously voted to approve the 2011 budget for the City of Bryant, after the mayor took office, which described the mayor’s salary as $71,032? (Encl #11 – Resolution 2011-01)
Is this the same alderman who filed charges against the Mayor with the Arkansas Ethics Commission, the same commission that just found him guilty of failing to file his own financial disclosure paperwork for 2010 in a timely way, and issued a formal reprimand to him as a result? (Encl #12 – AEC Letter – 27 May 11) The alderman who ran to the county prosecutor, trying to get him to find criminal misconduct in the Mayor’s adherence to the 2011 budget in correcting her salary, an attempt that was rejected by the prosecutor?
Lie after vindictive lie has been told in an effort to destroy Mayor Dabbs’ ability to govern, almost entirely because of her brief attempt to restore her salary to the one shown in the budget, the one that this same man described in a published quote as “the mayor of Bryant’s salary.” She was entitled to the same pay, but was branded a criminal by this man for trying to claim it.
I am embarrassed for not only the image this has cast on our city, and the distress this has brought upon our mayor and her family, but for the disgrace and shame that is about to be brought on this city and its former and current elected officials as I present verifying documentation to the press of all of these facts. The truth will soon be known in great detail about the misconduct, malfeasance and incompetence of our city government, as well as the personal vendetta conducted by one of its public officials.
Therefore, I am announcing a new website now online, called www.thetruthinbryant.blogspot.com where you will find a complete narrative on this and other wrongful activities by our city officials along with copies of documentation to substantiate and verify everything I‘ve shared with you tonight.
I would invite everyone in this room to log on and read the documentation. It is my belief after reading this mountain of evidence you will understand as never before the hard work that is yet ahead of Mayor Dabbs and hopefully now you will support her even more as the truth on this and other issues become known.
To all who have promoted the smear campaign against our mayor, who have told the lies and generated negative publicity and falsehoods about her and our City for the benefit of the less informed among us who read only headlines and first paragraphs, I say: SHAME ON YOU.
I implore the good and decent people of this city to join me in praying for Bryant. May God bless us all. Thank you.
LISA MEYER
12 Enclosures:
1. Johanson Letter - 25 Mar 11
2. Council Meeting Minutes – 8 Jan 09
3. Saline Courier Article – 12 Jan 09
4. Council Special Meeting Minutes – 26 Jan 09
5. Council Meeting Minutes – 30 Sep 09
6. Compensation Polices Generally (CPG) undated
7. Sworn Affidavits – Items A-E
8. Council Meeting Minutes 12 Nov 09 and Items A-D – Ordinances
9. Elected Official Pay stubs – Items A-H
10. Council Meeting Minutes – 28 Jan 10
11. Council Resolution 2011-01
12. Arkansas Ethics Commission Letters – 27 May 11
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61060767/Truth-In-Bryant-Scans-Sec-1
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61060614/Truth-In-Bryant-Scans-Sec-2
