Raise for city attorney meeting's sticking point

by Jason Dietrich

After a lengthy discussion Tuesday night, the Redondo Beach City Council once again decided it didn't have enough information to make a firm decision on how much to raise the salary of City Attorney Jerry Goddard.

At the tail end of a meeting that stretched past 11 p.m. council members were unable to decide on what changes, if any, to make in Goddard's current pay structure. They directed staff to do more research and planned on revisiting the issue at either next week's meeting Tuesday, September 12, or their meeting Tuesday September 19.

As it stands, Goddard, the City Treasurer and the City Clerk, have been receiving 5 percent raises annually set to make up for a five year span where elected department heads received no raises.

Goddard is up for re-election in March, 2001. Salaries and raises for elected officials must be set 30 days before the election's filing period opens. City Clerk Sandy Forrest and City Treasurer Ernie O'Dell aren't up for re-election until 2003.

Non-elected city employees receive a raise based on increases in the cost of living, which is typically much less than 5 percent. But elected officials have to know their salaries ahead of time, as that might influence their decision on whether or not to run for office.

Council members have said they want lower the disparity between raises for elected department heads and other staff.

"We want to establish a fair and equitable increase, in line with what other employees are getting," said District 4 Councilman Bob Pinzler.

Council members looked at salaries and benefits packages for elected officials in cities as big as Santa Ana or as small as El Segundo to try and determine if the city was offering a competitive rate of pay to potential city attorney. Goddard's total pay of $10,790 a month was 8 percent below the average total pay of $11,686 per month. Goddard earns $9,634 a month in base salary and $1,156 in deferred compensation he'd accumulated after years of working in public service. But a newcomer to the office who might not have as many years in public service, and who wouldn't be eligible for the high rates of payments to 401k and other deferred compensation programs under the city's pay plan.

"This is not an issue about Jerry Goddard, This is about the office of city attorney," said District 2 Councilman Kevin Sullivan.

But officials were hesitant to authorize a raise without getting information from more than the eight cities sampled.

"We're six out of eight in terms of population, six out of eight in terms of population and five out of eight in terms of size of the legal staff," said Parsons. "Do we have enough data and time to decide to increase the base salary?"

Goddard said he thought that Redondo's city attorney's salary should be in the top half of the field, if not the top 25 percent.

"I don't think that's warranted. I don't think our position as a city with an elected city attorney warrants it," Pinzler responded.

District 1 councilman Gerard Bisignano suggested leaving the 5 percent raise in place, to offset any cost of living increases and make the pay a bit more competitive.

"I can't help but believe that that the salaries won't be close," he said.ER