January 6, 2011

At tonight's Council meeting, the Council voted to reappoint all existing officers and to appoint an Interim City Clerk to replace the outgoing City Clerk who had accepted a job with another municipality. However, I voted not to reappoint our current City Manager, and Councilman Yardley joined me in this effort.

I firmly believe that overhead costs for our city are substantially more than is warranted and this is especially true with the City Manager position. When salary and all other benefits are considered, the City pays close to $11,000 per month towards the City Manager position. And at present, around 15% of our non-SPLOST revenue goes directly to pay the salary of just the City Manager. In addition, the City has paid out an additional $20,000 in increases for the City Manager over just the last four years.

When everyone else is cutting back and doing with less, governments should have to do that as well, especially in this economic environment where government revenues are in sharp decline and may even be more so down the road.

I was asked a lot this week about the severance package that would be paid out had the City Manager not been reappointed. The contracts currently covering our City Manager were put in place by a previous Council and not only guarantee a substantial lump sum payout if not renewed, but there is also no sunset clause in the contracts so any attempt at renegotiating the contracts is, for the most part, moot.

There was a workable idea to temporarily consolidate positions in order to reduce the City’s overhead expenses and rewrite new contracts. The lump sum severance package would have to be paid to our City Manager if not reappointed, but those costs could have been recouped in just six months from the costs savings of the consolidated position. However, the majority of the Council voted tonight to continue the current system instead.

Nonetheless, I made a vote against the reappointment because I am a strong fiscal conservative and I understand that Flowery Branch will have to address several competing priorities on the road ahead. Not only must we be proactive in ensuring a sound financial footing for the City but I will not raise your taxes to meet those priorities in our current economic environment.

As always, I welcome your feedback. Please feel free to contact me through my Website www.AmandaSwafford.net or by telephone at (770) 967-6681.