If the City Council approves a raise for the City Manager and no one hears it, does it make a sound? That riddle’s on the Hustle’s mind after council’s procedural, cut-and-dry approach to a raise for City Manager Marc Ott last week.
When Item 78 – a “resolution relating to the compensation and benefits for the City Manager” – came before council Thursday, all that was posted to back-up was a MadLibs-style draft for Marc Ott’s compensation, one containing a blank where Ott’s new salary would go.
Council didn’t exactly shed any light on the subject – the only remarks from the dais were procedural questions regarding whether or not council actually had to read the numbers into the record. No, they were told:
Ott’s salary was raised to $249,268.24, a 3% boost over last year’s (raise-free) compensation of $240,000. In Fact Daily wryly notes Ott also receives “a per-year cell phone and data allowance increase of 32 cents.”
While the nonexistent discussion of Ott’s compensation was decidedly free of the KeyPoint/Nathaniel Sanders II controversy that was potentially his undoing last year, the cold shoulder from council last week doesn’t exactly signal satisfaction with the city’s top executive, either.
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This article appears in August 26 • 2011.