Aug. 04--Des Plaines City Manager Michael Bartholomew is still set to receive a previously approved $22,000 annual raise, but following a unanimous decision by the city's aldermen on Monday, the pay hike will no longer be retroactive to April of 2014.
Though he supported the $22,000 increase, Ald. Don Smith, 7th, said he believed amending Bartholomew's employment agreement to make the raise retroactive to April of this year instead of last was "justified."
Bartholomew indicated to the council that he'd sign an agreement that included the approved amendment.
"I am sincerely sorry to the community for the controversy this has caused," he said. Bartholomew added that the issue, which was debated by the council for over an hour Monday night, had taken "center stage" in the city.
Four council members including Aldermen Patricia Haugeberg, 1st, Dick Sayad, 4th, James Brookman, 5th, and Malcolm Chester, 6th, voted in favor of amending the city's employment agreement with Bartholomew to reduce his annual base salary from $179,412 to $164,588. The motion was defeated after Mayor Matt Bogusz cast the tie breaker vote against the reduction. The four aldermen in favor of the decrease in base pay were the same four council members to vote against increasing Bartholomew's salary from $157,412 to $179,412 during a July 20 meeting.
In a 5-4 vote on July 20, with Bogusz serving as the tie breaker, the council approved the $22,000 annual pay increase retroactive until late April 2014, the date of Bartholomew's last annual evaluation from the city's aldermen.
Since the pay hike was approved, several aldermen said they had received numerous complaints about the raise from residents in their wards.
Chester said he spoke with many of his 6th ward constituents and none were in support of the approved raise.
"I talked to residents who were incensed and very angry," he said.
The aldermen in favor of the substantial increase previously pointed to the fact that Des Plaines ranked second from the bottom in base pay for its city manager among the 34 surrounding communities surveyed by city staff.
Chester said that even when he informed his constituents of the ranking, they still opposed the raise.
Brookman said he believed that "city manager salaries across the board are out of line."
Bartholomew's base pay, now that the raise had taken effect, was larger than the roughly $177,000 annual salary received by the governor of Illinois, "and I don't think that's the way it should be," he said.
A majority of the 4th ward residents Sayad said he spoke to about the issue were particularly perturbed by the retroactive nature of the increase.
Several aldermen, Sayad included, were also bothered to learn during a discussion of the city's warrant register that Bartholomew had already received a check from the city for $27,000 to cover the approved pay increase between April of last year and July of this year.
Finance director and assistant city manager Dorothy Wisniewski said after the meeting that Bartholomew received $18,000 of the gross $27,000 amount after taxes were deducted.
Eighth Ward Alderman Michael Charewicz praised the work Bartholomew had done during his time as city manager in addition to the team he had hired to work under him.
He said the raise amounts to about 38 cents per year spread out across the city's roughly 58,000 residents and is "a small price to pay for the consistency we have gained in the past few years in Des Plaines."
Wisniewski said the pay increase Bartholomew received covering April of last year until April of this year would be refunded to the city over the course of several pay checks.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter.
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