Cape Coral City Council members slipped on their administrative hats Wednesday to discuss their annual evaluations of city staffers who report to the elected board.<\/p>\n
Those staffers included City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn and City Attorney Aleksandr Boksner, who are contract employees, as well as City Auditor Andrea R. Russell and personnel who work in the city council offices.<\/p>\n
The evaluations took place at a special meeting held in council\u2019s conference room instead of Council Chambers \u201cbecause the evaluation is treated more like a working session than a regular legislative meeting,\u201d according to the city\u2019s Communications Office.<\/p>\n
Ummm, OK, but aren\u2019t council workshops, like the one that preceded Wednesday\u2019s special meeting, \u201cworking sessions?\u201d<\/p>\n
And are not city employees \u2014 particularly the city manager and city attorney who are front-and-center participants at every council meeting \u2014\u00a0directly accountable to \u201cthe people,\u201d the top tier of the city of Cape Coral\u2019s own organizational chart?<\/p>\n
A couple of things.<\/p>\n
Yes, the special meeting shuffled out of chambers and into the conference room was open to the public. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s state statute, not a city choice.<\/p>\n
What was a city choice \u2014 specifically a choice of our elected officials \u2014 was to hold the meeting in a room where it could not be broadcast on CapeTV, was not live-streamed and, except for an audio recording available only via a public records request, is not readily available to those who may not have been able to attend the evaluation session.<\/p>\n
The decision \u2014 a long-standing and often criticized one \u2014 befuddles us. <\/p>\n
How can an elected board that hears at citizen\u2019s input almost weekly that 1) it doesn\u2019t listen to residents and 2) that it collectively eschews transparency \u2014 particularly about spending \u2014 be so consciously transparent-avoidant knowing the end result of Wednesday\u2019s special meeting likely would be controversial raises for two of the most highly paid individuals on the city\u2019s payroll?<\/p>\n
Messrs. Ilczyszyn and Boksner each received good reviews for their job performance over the last year and received base salary increases for their efforts.<\/p>\n
Mr. Ilczyszyn, who received an overall council rating of 3.9 out of 5 on a scale of 1-5, was awarded a one-time payment of $11,380.88 \u2014 the equivalent to a 3.25% increase \u2014 in lieu of a raise at his request.<\/p>\n
His annual base salary was $336,984.65 with a total compensation of $350,180.80. He had received a 7.25% bump last year.<\/p>\n
Mr. Boksner\u2019s overall evaluation from city council was 3.8 out of 5.<\/p>\n
His compensation going into Wednesday\u2019s special meeting was $320,609.69. Council approved a 3.25% increase, or $10,783.79, which will come in the form of deferred compensation. The increase is retroactive to the first full pay period after Aug. 13.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll not debate council\u2019s evaluation findings, the salaries, or the increases here.<\/p>\n
We will say they are some pretty big numbers, though, and the taxpaying public had the right to see how the sausage was made.<\/p>\n
The special meeting should have been held in council chambers.<\/p>\n
It should have been televised.<\/p>\n
And it should have become part of the city\u2019s videos that are accessible online.<\/p>\n
Keeping such meetings \u00ad- and all those like them \u2014 in the public view is among the matters the post-election \u201cnew council\u201d should address.<\/p>\n
Breeze editorial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cape Coral City Council members slipped on their administrative hats Wednesday to discuss their annual evaluations of city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-412308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}