The Hattiesburg City Council approved Mayor Toby Barker’s two newest appointments and two new positions Tuesday afternoon at City Hall, but not without an eight-minute protest against the decisions by Ward 2 Councilwoman Deborah Delgado.
On Monday, Barker named Delores McNair for the vacant seat on the Hattiesburg Public School District board of trustees and Andrew Ellard to serve as director for the newly combined Department of Urban Development. The nominations were approved Tuesday, but Delgado objected to Ellard’s hiring and the salary attached to it.
“This one is a problem for me for a number of reasons,” she said about the appointment of Ellard. “This bothers me on a number of levels, first, because of the salary, especially when the salary of city employees has always been in issue since I first sat down in this chair. It … is a problem for me when most of the people who are doing the work that needs to be done in this city are not being paid a living wage. I know that this is a new administration and I am sure that this administration has great ideas for curing some of our past misdeeds and past errors. But to begin the process by paying a director $82,000 a year is a little bit top-heavy for me.”
Ellard serves as city manager for the City of Eagleville, Tenn.. He has more than eight years of city administration experience, including more than five with the City of Hattiesburg’s Federal and State Programs department, where he served as a project manager and as interim director.
Delgado said Ellard should have more experience to earn the $82,000 annual salary.
“Based upon the experience that I have had giving this council that I sit on to support a living wage for the people that work for the city,” she said, “I do understand and appreciate the value of combining two departments and then having one salary, where in another situation we would have had two and would have exceeded that total amount. However, because of a lack of experience on the part of this candidate in the area of planning – which is one of our most critical areas in this city – there is going to have to be a significant person back him up when it comes to planning, a person with significant experience. And with that experience that person should have a reasonable expectation of being paid for his or her expertise in that area. If we are talking about growing this city and making sure people do business in the city when it comes to construction, when it comes to opening businesses in this city and all the areas that planning is responsible for, then we are going to have to buttress that individual when it comes to that.”
Delgado said she also did not support creating the two positions that Barker sought – a Public Information Officer in the Police Department for a $50,000 annual salary and a Community Initiatives Coordinator in the Municipal Court who will be paid $35,000 a year.
“The person who is currently doing that work (as public information officer), who is a lieutenant in the Police Department, does not make $50,000 a year,” she said. “That person makes $40,000-something. This person has been with the Police Department for, I’m thinking, upwards of 13-15 years; that’s a long time to be putting your life on the line every day and not making $50,000. In addition to that, we need more police officers. In the place of doing this, I would think there would have been some consideration for investing this $50,000 in another police officer out on the street, reducing our need – although it is tremendous – by at least one. Maybe there are funds that I’m not aware of, but that fund poses a significant problem for me.”
Delgado said the city employees’ wages should be increased before new positions are created.
“I see these new positions created without us having addressed the salaries of our folks out here on the ground though that are still making $10, $11 or $12 an hour where in comparable private industry they would make more,” she said. “When we bring contractors, for example, if we have our folks working out there alongside them, our folks may be making $10, $11 or $12 an hour whereas a private contractor’s employees may be making $15, $16 or $17 an hour. So those are the challenges for me. I just think that this is not the time for us to do that. Our directors make $65,000 now, unless we are talking about raising all directors up to $82,000 a year or something near that, that’s no problem for me.”
Delgado then passed out copies of a Police Department employee’s pay sheet, saying that officer had taken on extra duties and had not been compensated for the additional work.
“These are the kinds of challenges,” she said. “I am giving this to you because this is a real problem as an example of the kinds of things that we’re dealing with. So when you’re talking about bringing on a new employee at $82,000 a year, that’s not fair, OK? It’s an amount I would like to see a person make, but can the City of Hattiesburg afford it in the face of all of our employees who are critically underpaid.”
Barker said in hiring Ellard, “By combining these departments, paying one person $82,000 instead of two people $60,000, that creates about $40,000 that can be reallocated toward raises and toward bolstering other positions. The planning department doesn’t necessarily need a planning person overseeing it; I think you need a strong administrator and that’s what Andrew Ellard brings to the table.”
Barker said the money for the other positions are available.
“I think we budget for 120 officers; there are 93,” he said. “There are existing personnel dollars. This is not going to keep us from adding another police officer; recruiting and retaining is a bigger challenge than what the City Council has budgeted. So that’s not a problem.
“The police department needs someone who can not only handle the public information side of it, but also the community relations side,” Barker continued. “The goal of any city right now has to be to create stronger ties among its neighborhoods, all of its neighborhoods and its law enforcement officers. That’s the benefits of having dedicated persons just to do that. The Public Information Officer needs to be a full-time job.
In the subsequent voting, Delgado and Ward 5 Councilman Nicholas Brown voted against hiring Ellard and the creation of the Police Department Public Information Officer, while Ward 1 Alderman Jeffrey George, Ward 3 Alderman Carter Carroll and Ward 4 Alderwoman Mary Dryden voted for the two motions. Delgado also opposed the motion to create the Community Initiatives Coordinator’s position.
The next meeting of the Hattiesburg City Council will be at 4 p.m. Aug. 7 to set the agenda.
