The City Council voted 4-1 on Feb. 26 to extend City Manager Bill Workman’s contract to Jan. 2, 2016 as per Mayor Mike Gin’s recommendation.
Councilman Bill Brand cast the dissenting vote, suggesting the newly-elected council revisit the contract extension discussion in July.
“I feel like we’re extending [the contract] before [the new council] gets here and it’s not really fair,” he said.
Councilman Steve Aspel countered that the decision “does not tie the hands of the future city council,” which will be free to terminate Workman’s contract with or without cause. (In the latter case, the city would owe him 12 months’ severance.)
Resident Christopher Quinn challenged the council to review Workman’s credit card expenditures, and brandished records he received by request from the city clerk.
“As I understand, Bill Workman is the highest-paid city employee there is in Redondo Beach,” Quinn said. “Thanks to the sunshine laws in our beautiful city I have a copy of his contract and it says he makes $223,463 a year or $18,621.92 a month.”
He noted that over the past two years, upwards of $1 million has been charged to 176 city credit cards at restaurants, hotels, bars, and movie theaters.
“Call me crazy but someone making $18,621 a month could probably afford to buy their own coffee [and] pony up for their own drinks,” he told the council.
Workman told Easy Reader he would be open to meeting with Quinn to discuss his concerns and defended all expenses charged to his city credit card as work-related.
“To conduct my duties as the chief administrative officer for the City, I have the usual and customary expenses related to such a position,” he said.
“The job requires my purchase of supplies and services as well as business travel, meetings, negotiations and community engagement. The expenses appearing on my CalCard are directly job related. For example, one week my CalCard may show travel expenses to Washington DC to lobby for Seaside Lagoon and the next week my CalCard may show expenses for coffee with a Fire Chief job candidate.
“Billings are reconciled to our City purchasing/travel policies and are aligned to meet all State and Federal requirements.”
