The Easthom Page

The closest vote by far in the last year for the Chapel Hill Town Council was the vote to authorize the manager to pursue a plan for changing all town employees to a biweekly payroll.  The vote was 5-4.   Around 200+ town employees have had weekly checks for years, some for the span of their whole career with the town.  Last night at our budget hearing many of those employees came out and spoke against the change. 

One of the interesting parts to this was the $50 gas card that was offered to employees that would switch to the biweekly in an expedited manner.  I read about that in the Town of Chapel Hill employee newsletter, and had not heard about that offering in a council meeting or in any managerial email.

Some undoubtedly liked that, some really hated the idea.   See the story in today’s Herald and the N&O.

I think that an option to change is the way to go.  Town employees that want to have the weekly checks should keep that, and those that are willing to change to biweekly can do so.  I think that the moving so many long time workers from weekly to biweekly pay can be too much of a lifestyle change, different from what they have come to expect over the years, and they have the right to continue to receive their pay as they have been used to over these years.   The Town of Chapel Hill is not like every city in the nation, and it is not a corporation.  At least I don’t think it is or should be.  Another great thing the Town does, that the town pays greatly for, is the continuation of private health insurance after an employee retires.  That is a great benefit.  Many cities do not have this option for their employees.  It’s just one of those things that makes us unique, and a nice place to work.  All of our citizens benefit from the great work of our employees, and I certainly want to make them happy.

I was very relieved to read the opinion article in the Chapel Hill News today entitled “Cost of Lot 5 is a Moving Target”.  Last Monday night when the town manager asked the council for an extra $460,000, I felt alone in my concerns about this project’s costs.  Apparently, however, I’m not the only one as evident by the author of this column.  The argument at our council meeting was that these expenses were not new but but have been expected all along.  The only added expense that I knew about (or remembered! I was not on the negotiating team), beginning only a couple of months ago, was the environmental remediation for around 240K.    That was the sort of expense that could not have been avoided or anticipated in the budget for the project that was originally presented.  My concern was the “construction management cost” and the “professional services” costs—about 220K more, that was not included in the original budget.  I felt like if we did indeed know about these costs, and they were there “all along”, then why not put them in the original budget as presented to the public?  I voted “no” philosophically—although it’s obvious I wanted the environmental cleanup and the honorarium for Dean Malecha.  Thank goodness someone else in Chapel Hill feels the same way.  I think this opinion article was right on target.  It follows:

“Last spring, supporters of the proposed Downtown Development Initiative — more commonly known as the
Lot 5 project — pitched a proposal to the public that sounded mighty tempting. Ram Development Co. would build two big new projects downtown on the sites of what is now parking lot 5 and the Wallace Deck. They would include more than 200 condominiums, a lot of retail space and open area. The town would be a partner in the project, but one with a limited financial investment: while Ram anticipated spending $70 million to $80 million, the town’s cash contribution would be capped at $500,000. Well, times change. Last summer Ram realized it couldn’t make that plan work. The company and town staff went back to the drawing board and returned in the fall with a new and very different plan: Scratch the Wallace Deck idea; just do the
Lot 5 project, and the town would contribute not $500,000 but $7.25 million. Yikes. That was a much less attractive proposal, and the trend it indicated — rapidly increasing public cost — was hardly reassuring. With good reason, it seems. After Town Manager Roger Stancil last week asked the Town Council for another $460,000 for
Lot 5, the town’s tab for past and anticipated expenses now sits at nearly $8.4 million. We’ve come a long way from those heady days when we were on the hook for just half a million bucks. Supporters of the project on the council say that what might appear to be new expenses actually aren’t, that those expenses have been expected and included in the plan all along. That may be. But $7.25 million, not $8.4 million or any other total, was the figure we were presented with when the new incarnation of the
Lot 5 proposal was rolled out last fall. We’re guessing $8.4 million isn’t going to be the final tally, either. If that is so, if the figure is going to climb further, it would behoove the town to go ahead and say what it expects the final number to be, rather than appearing to ratchet it up by increments.” —Chapel Hill News May 13, 2007