Seal Beach executives and mid-management staff will get a 1 percent pay raise next year. The pay increase is included in the budget for next year, which was approved by the City Council this week. The pay raise was mentioned in the third paragraph of the letter introducing the final draft of the budget to the council. City Manager Jill Ingram signed the letter and is one of the beneficiaries of the increase.
One council member and two residents questioned the transparency and legality of the pay raise. The issue came up during the public hearing on the final budget for 2015-16. District Four Councilman Gary Miller cast the sole dissenting vote against the budget, apparently because of the pay increase. Miller argued that the letter was superseding the city’s contract with executives.
Miller said he had no idea the council was giving city executive staff a pay increase. According to Miller, he wasn’t aware of it until a member of the public raised the issue that night.
City Attorney Craig Steele said the council had the discretion to treat executives the same way as other city staff that received a 1 percent pay raise based on the consumer price index through labor negotiations. He said it was, by definition, a proper expenditure. When responding to comments from the public, Steele said he did not believe the city needed to re-negotiate its contract with the city manager.
City Attorney Steele and Councilman Miller had several exchanges over the matter and each remained firm in his position. According to Mayor Ellery Deaton, the issue was that the council didn’t want to treat one group of employees differently from others.
Deaton said the letter was at the beginning of the budget. Miller argued that the letter was not transparent in that it didn’t say it was superseding the contract.
Resident Robert Goldberg said he wasn’t sure if the council could legally give the city manager and six other executives pay raises that he said were not provided in the budget. He said they could give her a merit raise, but that should be an agendized item.
Resident Joyce Parque also objected to what she called a lack of transparency. She asked when the public got to see the letter, “the letter was written by her,” Parque said, referring to Ingram.
Pargue argued that the council did not approve a pay raise in open session of council and implied that she had been lied to when told that recently closed session of the council had not involved a merit pay raise for Ingram.
City Attorney Steele said he told Parque the truth.
According to Deaton, the public hearing that was in progress was the public discussion.
According to Finance Director Victoria Beatley, the draft of the budget had been out for more than a month. (The council held a budget workshop Thursday afternoon, June 5.) She said the final draft of the budget had been out since Friday, June 19.
District Five Councilwoman Massa-Lavitt said that no one could say the letter wasn’t public. Deaton said the council couldn’t make people read the letter or understand it.
The council ultimately approved the budget without changes.
