By Tommy Smigiel
There are a lot of healthy discussions happening within the City of Norfolk right now. I call it healthy, but some might look at it as just more controversy. However you might feel, I am happy that more citizens are getting engaged. We need citizens involved in their government. The council will take up two issues dealing with our city employees this week which is causing some buzz and misinformation to be spread.
First, I want to say THANK YOU to all of our city employees and the work they do each day. I was happy to be endorsed by our city employees last winter and I am continuing to bring their issues and concerns to the attention of the City Manager’s office. It is important to note however, that it is not my place to meddle in individual personnel issues. One of my roles as a council member is to ask questions, raise concerns, or make recommendation on policy. If an individual employee contacts me about being treated unfairly by a department head, there really isn’t much I can do. However, I successfully suggested new policy for an anonymous fraud, waste and abuse hotline (664-4003) for our citizens and employees to call. Our City Manager is responsible for that side of our city government and I believe Marcus Jones will work to repair relationship issues that occurred before his arrival. We need to give him a chance to reform our government. In his effort to “right-size” our city government, Marcus presented two proposals to City Council last week. Both of these items are on the docket this week for a formal vote. I am presenting them in reverse order.
The first proposal (R-7) is to offer retirement incentives to employees who are eligible to retire, but were planning on sticking around for a few more years. The retirement incentive is $10,000 in one lump sum, or $5,000 in one lump sum with payment of single health care for 12 months. No city employees are being forced to take this option. There is additional information in the “right-size” presentation to explain what other cities in Hampton Roads have offered their employees.
The second proposal (R-1) is to allow the City Manager to offer separation “severance” packages to both classified and unclassified employees. The proposal will give 1 month of salary for any employee who has worked for the city for 1-2 years, 2 months salary for any employee who has worked for the city for more than two years and less than five years, and 3 months salary for those with 5 or more years of city employment. This package will not be given to an employee who chooses to retire and uses the retirement incentive. This will mainly be given to employees who are part of the Reduction in Force (RIF), that will be suggested in the 2012 budget. Once again, there is additional information in the presentation. For city employees reading this post, please know that City Council has not seen any proposals for who will be affected by the RIF implementation. In addition, we have not seen any proposals for the elimination of departments.
It is unfortunate that Norfolk is in a situation that these even have to be proposed. With a $32 million shortfall, Marcus has his hands full with trying to present council a balanced budget. I believe it is important that he has the tools needed to get things together. I have some opinions on why Norfolk has this shortfall, but I will stay away from campaign mode. Hopefully, a lesson has been learned about how Norfolk spends taxpayer’s dollars and I believe Marcus is the right person to lead that change.
Here are two additional presentations shown to council last week:
Summary on Budget Community Engagement and a presentation called Personnel 101
Later this week, I going to work on a discussion about apartments in Norfolk. Click the apartment link to read the article highlighted in today’s Virginian-Pilot.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Does the severance affect Mr. Marquis’ situation, or is his outside this policy. I know it won’t affect Mrs. Williams.
Are there people in city positions that won’t have this coverage, or will be allowed greater benefits, as with Mrs. Williams?
In my opinion, the policy should be the same for ALL employees of the city, regardless of level of position.
Tommy,
Two comments I publised on the apartments article:
An important question: What’s being done to make Norfolk an attractive place to live? to attract businesses, small and large; residents, singles and families, to Norfolk? what incentives, collective and individual, are we leveraging to attract them to Norfolk? What tax incentives can we offer businesses to put roots here? This is a big part of the focus and leadership we need. “Without a vision, people (cities) perish (or are in a constant status quo.) Another part of this plan is taking care of us already living in the city. BTW, studies show that how cities support their schools is big part of what makes cities attractive…More needs to be done there. Nevertheless, we can’t plan by “build it and they will come.”
Let’s be honest and candid about what’s happening here. Recent trends don’t seem to support these new appartments: MacArthur Mall’s store closings and the food court demise; Waterside’s struggles, etc. Didn’t the apts/condominiums owner on the old Social Services site foreclose? Didn’t the downtown Market Place abruptly close? All of these are partly because many aren’t attracted to shop or live here for varied reasons. We need a strategic, comprehensive plan/vision to make Norfolk more attractive. Why not give incentives to our public servants like teachers, fireman, police and city workers to live in some of these many empty apartments? They’ve not had raises in years, so why not create a “win-win” for us all?
One thought on severance: Poor performance and/or a lost of confidence in performance should not be rewarded with severance pay. City employment contracts should specify this. Employment expectations and performance evaluations should suffie for termination.