Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

How much is your pay raise this year? If you are like the average American worker my guess it is somewhere between 2-2.5% plus you pay anywhere between 20-50% of your health care benefits.

Giving the city's current financial concerns why do the city employees receive more then we the tax payers do?

Currently, I believe this is correct, the average city employee only pays 7% of their total health care cost and from what I read in today's paper they are going to be given a 3.5% increase each year for the next 2 years.

I am not saying that they should not have some sort of cost of living increase but it should be more in line with what we the tax payers are getting with in our own jobs. This year most of us will feel lucky to receive a 2% increase and that most likely will not even give us enough to keep up with increased health care and fuel cost.

I think with the current budget concerns the city needs to begin taking a business approach and look to have the employees pay more for their health care cost [at least 20%] and give them raises that equal what the rest of us are receiving.

Increasing taxes as I know is being discussed and considered is not the answer. The answer is cutting expenses and living with in your means.

If the city employees do not like it they can get a job in the real world.

We the tax payers of Pickerington are taxed and levied to death. Enough is enough.



By City Tax Payer

Thank your local union

Like every other union with multiple year contracts the majority of the city employees are locked into raises.

As I understand it the city gave the same percentage to all non-union to be equitable.

running out of money

I think once you look further into the budget shortfalls and the pay raises you will find a couple of our City councilmen asleep at the wheel. The budget process starts in September and the negotiations for the union contracts starts mid-summer. There are those on council and those that serve on the Finance committee that seemed to have been blind-sided by the budget shortfalls for 2009. When they found they had budget shortfalls they had already negotiated with the unions and the cat was out of the bag.

It is interesting that the City of Pickerington would allow the City Manager and the Finance Director to negotiate a contract that would benefit them directly. Apparently the City manager's contract gets the same raises as the union folks so the higher they get the higher the raise for the manager. Now we have a manager who has or is leaving town with a hefty raise in another city and leaves the city with some real problems when it comes to HER budget.

I think if the council is to redeem itself here they must separate the City Manager's contract in the future from the pay raises the employees get. I think the council must set some goals and if the manager doesn't reach their goals then they don't get a raise or at least they get a reduced raise. In other words, the council needs to set its priorities and hold the manager to those goals. Of course this will require cooperation between the Mayor and Council. Each year the Manager should face a review and their future depends on the review.

Just to remind everyone Smith and Fix have been running the show the last year when it comes to the City's finances. Why weren't they asking more questions and developing a plan early on? I am hearing we will be out of cash by early 2009.

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