Is Mayor Bartlett's budget really underfunded?

[T-town girl]

I found this on KRMG website by Steve Berg:

" How the Mayor's office budget is funded, it is really confusing," Bartlett said.

But is it? The biggest part of the Mayor's office budget by far is what's called personal services; the payroll, basically. And at the beginning of this current fiscal year - July 1st, 2009 - Mayor Kathy Taylor had a total of eleven appointees paid from the payroll budget. Mayor Bartlett now has ten appointee's. To compare the two staffs, we look at the cash-burn for the Mayor's payroll back in July for Kathy's staff and the monthly rate of cash-burn for the Mayor's payroll in January, the first full month in office for Dewey's staff.
Compare the Monthly Cash-Burn of the Tulsa Mayors office:
Using the city Finance Department's own records, we found that even when you subtract Dewey's salary... remember that Kathy didn't take a salary... the cost of Dewey's staff is still around 2-thousand dollars more per month in terms of salaries than Kathy's, even though Dewey's staff is smaller by one appointee.
Compare the salaries of Mayor Bartlett's with Mayor Taylor's staff:
"It will be difficult to get my vote," said Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen. Christiansen questions the salaries of Terry Simonson... 150-thousand dollars a year... and Jim Twombly... 140-thousand a year... which combined are nearly 30-thousand dollars more than the combined salaries of Mayor Taylor's two highest-paid employee's.
"Y'know, wouldn't they be willing to work for $120,000 or $115,000," said Christiansen. At the current rate of cash-burn, Mayor Bartlett's payroll would be more than 160-thousand over budget. Pat Connelly, the budget director said Mayor Taylor's budget was also unsustainable, but by November, her Chief of Staff, her second-highest paid employee had left the office, which put them back on track.
"We were right exactly on track with the appropriate percentage for the year of the total 12-month personal services budget," Taylor said. She says her office, had she stayed, could have operated effectively for the rest of the Fiscal Year without a Chief of Staff.
What if Kathy Taylor and her staff had stayed for a whole fiscal year?
"If your funds decrease due to the economy, you figure out how to operate differently," Taylor said. "You just...do it."
Steve Berg: " Should you at least get your staff's payroll down to where Mayor Taylor's was last October before you...
Mayor Dewey Bartlett: " Well in my view, I think it is...in fact, I think it's less."
Twice, Bartlett wanted to focus on other positions hired by the Mayor like the Human Resources Director, but those are paid by other departments.
Steve Berg: " When Pat Connelly says the Mayor's budget is underfunded, he's only referring to those 10 appointees that are paid for from the Mayor's Office Budget."
Mayor Dewey Bartlett: " That I don't know. I'd have to ask him in with me, and you and I could ask him the same question and hopefully we'd understand it."
KRMG news did ask Connelly, and he said he was only referring to the 10. Of course nobody expects the Mayor to work for free as Taylor did, but Christiansen says now's not the time for a Mayor who draws a salary to have a staff as... or even more expensive... than a Mayor who didn't take a salary.
"We've laid off police officers, we're closing community centers, the lights are off on the highway... and I wouls question whether paying several people a lot of money in the Mayor's Office at this point in time is needed," Christiansen said.
As people might have heard, Mayor Bartlett's three highest-paid staff members recently volunteered to take pay cuts that will slow the cash-burn of his staff to a point that is closer to that of Kathy Taylor's staff back in July but still much higher than what hers was in November.
The city's Finance Department says that other minor savings have been found and that the salary of former Human Resources Director Jeff Wilkie could be redirected to the Mayors office budget. But even with that, the Finance Department says the Mayor's Office would need another $75,000 from the City Council.

I found this very interesting - Mayor Bartlett does not even know his personal staff budget? How can we trust him with the entire city of Tulsa budget???

[RecycleMichael]

That was interesting info.

I thought the former Mayor's staff would have been on budget with her not taking a salary. The fact that the new administration has eleven paid employees instead of ten would make it tough to stay under budget. I don't have enough information to know if the salaries are too high or too low. It is an incredibly demanding and the Mayor's office is not a place to learn on the job.

But I thought each Mayor was allowed sixteen at-will employees.

[Conan71]

That was interesting info.

I thought the former Mayor's staff would have been on budget with her not taking a salary. The fact that the new administration has eleven paid employees instead of ten would make it tough to stay under budget. I don't have enough information to know if the salaries are too high or too low. It is an incredibly demanding and the Mayor's office is not a place to learn on the job.

But I thought each Mayor was allowed sixteen at-will employees.

Bartlet (sic) has 10 employees.  Taylor had 11.

Problem is, Bartlet (sic) hired Simonson for $150K and Twombly for $140K.  I wish there were better truth in advertising though, let's face it, Terry is the new City/County liaision.

[RecycleMichael]

Thanks for the correction.

I like the idea of the city and county getting along. It sure beats the relationship we had a couple of years ago.

[tulsa_fan]

I like the idea of the city and county getting along. It sure beats the relationship we had a couple of years ago.

I like the idea of a mayor who knows what the heck is going on, and once he earns my trust, maybe I could follow his lead, but unfortunately this has become an under the table, deceptive deal; it's very obvious he isn't calling the shots.  He's the mayor, he should know more about his own office than anyone.  So far I haven't seen anything he knows facts about, expect that maybe we can consolidate some services with the county, or trade with the county, or have the county police our streets, why doesn't he spend time figuring out how his city works first.

I think its fair to say ALL city departments are underfunded this year, and all other departments either took layoffs or paycuts . . . significant paycuts.

[sgrizzle]

Twombly was making $124k at Broken Arrow, but was laid off under odd circumstances in June and given another $124k in severance, then got a lesser position with the CoT for $140k 6 months later.

Simonson was making $80k for the county while records show he was still operating his law firm (he still has a shingle on 71st last I saw) and went straight from there to $150k

The CIO of the city makes $138k a year plus a reported $30k bonus from grant money. That's $168k a year. Payscale.com says the average for organizations that size/market/budget/etc is around $90k

What this tells me Is that I want to work for the city. I'll even agree to a 10% pay cut every year for the next decade.