Compensation Study
Attached are documents used by reporter Allen Baker in his article on the City's compensation study in the June 10, 2010, issue of the Ashland Sneak Preview.
Summary of Salaries and Benefits
Picking the consultant
The Ashland city council went along with City Administrator Martha Bennett’s suggestion for the classification and compensation study two years ago, and proposals were due in October of 2008.
The city actively solicited proposals from consultants around the region and beyond. There were 13 that came in.
Some bids were two-inch-thick thick binders with lots of filler. Others were fairly simple.
Three bids were in the $25,000 to $35,000 area. Four firms wanted to charge $70,000 to nearly $100,000. Four were around $40,000 to $50,000, including the one from CPS Human Resource Services, at $51,660.
Bennett, Finance Director Lee Tuneberg, and Human Resources Director Tina Gray read and ranked the proposals independently on a point system. Price, or ``fee arrangement’’ was one of the criteria, but only 20 points on a 100-point scale.
The three managers all gave CPS their highest mark. The city did check some references, but didn’t do any interviews, Bennett said.
``They seemed like the best value for the money when we went through the process,’’ Bennett related. ``There was a wide diversity of qualifications, and a wide range of costs.’’
While the city has a good handle on consultants for engineering work and the like, there was no past experience on this kind of service, she said.
CPS is a quasi-state agency affiliated with the California government. Its proposal said the firm had $132 million in revenue the prior year.
As the study progressed, California ran into budget problems of its own, and so did CPS.
``In the middle of our study, they went through a lot of changes,’’ Bennett said, including the departure of the person who had done most of the Ashland work.
There were delays and quality problems both, the city manager said.
``There are some things we’re saving,’’ she said. ``I wouldn’t use this firm again.’’
--Allen Baker
Fate of the Wastewater Treatment Plant
April 15, 2010
Long time no see! Here's a commentary I wrote for the April 2010 issue, floating the idea that we get rid of the wastewater treatment plant. If you're tired of paying $34 a month for sewer while everyone else in the valley pays $14 a month, you'll find this article interesting. —C. Hayden
Let the Voters Decide the Fate of the Wastewater Treatment Plant
The headline in the March 18 Daily Tidings said it all: “Rates rise for water and sewer.” Hmm, wasn’t that what the City was threatening to do if we didn’t pass the meals tax in November? Almost proves the adage that “a sucker is born every minute,” doesn’t it?
In fairness to the City, they maintain that if it weren’t for the meals tax, our rates would be going up even higher, but you have to wonder exactly what it is we’re paying for.
If awards were given for the most foolish decisions ever made by a governmental entity, the City of Ashland’s decision not to join the Bear Creek Valley Sanitary Authority (BCVSA) has to rank right up there at the very top.
BCVSA was created in 1966 “to help protect the health of the Rogue Valley by solving wastewater disposal problems.” The Authority provides and maintains sewer and storm drain systems for over 18,000 businesses and households and is part of the regional sewer system that includes every city in Jackson County … except Ashland.
Over the years, most cities recognized that it was in their best interests to join the regional system. Rather than constructing and maintaining hugely expensive wastewater treatment plants, they merely piped their “stuff” to the regional plant located near the Rogue River, where it was efficiently processed.
When I called BCVSA Manager Chuck Root, he said the system was designed to serve Ashland but they have, so far, decided to go it alone.
“It would cost $9 million to join the system,” Root said. “That translates to $1,200 per hookup, and there are 7,514 in Ashland. If Ashland had decided to join in the early 70s, the federal government was paying 75% of the cost.”
Ashland’s city fathers, however, weren’t interested. For some unknown reason, they wanted control over their water system and felt that their effluent might someday be worth some money.
A Fateful $50 Million Rathole
Boy, did they ever get that wrong. By 1992, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) informed the City of Ashland that their wastewater treatment plant was killing fish in Bear Creek, and that they were going to have to expend $20 million to get it fixed.
Armed with some extra money from a meals tax that was passed in March 1993, the City started planning for the upgrades. They even hired a firm, Carollo Engineers out of Portland, in 1998 to help them come up with a game plan.
Carollo warned the City that before it was all over, the wastewater treatment plant would end up costing them $50 million, maybe more considering all the new requirements the DEQ pulls out of its hat every two years. The firm gave Ashland another option: join BCVSA for $9 million and same yourself a lot of money.
The mayor and City Council at that time were stuck in the old paradigm of thinking the effluent was worth something. Grandiose notions of selling it to golf courses and using it on parklands never came to fruition, and none of that could ever possibly have made up for the $50 million they had poured down the rathole.
And if you think operating and maintaining that white albatross off Nevada Street is cheap, think again. While Public Works Director Mike Faught failed to return my phone call, you would have to think that the costs run into millions of dollars a year. It’s probably the main reason our sewer rates went up.
What if we were to stop throwing all this good money after bad? What if we shuttered the wastewater treatment plant, built a pump station and pipeline to Talent (where the lines of BCVSA extend), and sent all our sewage to the regional plant, where it could be efficiently processed per DEQ regulations? What would it save us?
Sewer rates in Ashland just went up to $23 a month. The City says without the meals tax, it would go up to $34 a month. (And before any of you think you’re getting a good deal, just remember that you pay a sewer tax every time you eat out in Ashland, so in reality, the average household is paying $34 a month for the wastewater treatment plant.)
Guess what they pay in Medford? I took the liberty of calling them and learned that it is $14 a month for the average household. That’s $20 a month less than in Ashland! Anyone who thinks this City is looking after his or her best interests in this matter is being sorely misled.
Let the Voters Decide
Proponents of the wastewater treatment plant say that we need to spend $50 million because the fish in Bear Creek need that expensively treated water. They’re probably right, which is why I have always argued that we hook up to the Talent-Ashland-Phoenix (TAP) Intertie, a pipeline that delivers potable water from the Medford plant to those locations.
Talent and Phoenix have already signed on, and their water rates are miniscule compared to Ashland (the City just imposed another 8% increase and much more was approved for 2011 and 2012; why bother with the negative publicity of increasing it every year when you can do it all at once, right?)
At this time, we receive most of our water from Reeder Reservoir with supplemental infusions of TID water during the late summer months. IF we hooked into the TAP Intertie, not only would we have more than enough water for our personal use, but the TID water could be diverted to Bear Creek for the little fishies during the summer months.
All of this makes perfect sense, and you have to wonder why our City officials don’t make the necessary changes. It’s because they’re stuck in the old paradigm popularized by our mayor back in the late 80s and early 90s that we were special, that we didn’t need to join the Bear Creek Valley Sanitary Authority because we somehow knew more than everyone else did in the Valley.
Well, we were wrong, and it was a $50 million mistake, soon to be $60 million and probably topping off at $70 million before the DEQ is done with us.
In 1997 the City of Eagle Point joined the regional sewer system. The matter was put on the ballot, and 90% of the people voted to end the idiotic and expensive system of lagoons that they were using to treat their sewage.
According to BCVSA’s Chuck Root, there have been a number of votes in the Valley over the last twenty years about whether to join the system or not, and every one of them was approved by 85-90% of the voters.
Why was the egregious decision to pour $50-$70 million down the wastewater treatment plant rathole never brought before the voters of Ashland? I would be willing to bet that in 1970 or 1992, the voters would have said, “Let’s be sensible about this thing. We’re not an isolated entity. We live in a regional community, and we should act responsibly.”
My proposal: We put this thing on the ballot and let the voters decide because our elected officials are scared to do anything. Anyone willing to help out on this matter can e-mail me at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. Aloha.
Racks Downtown: A Non-Issue
February 4, 2010
The number of important issues facing Ashland is endless: water (or lack thereof), wildfire dangers, sustainability, green technologies, alternative energy, economic development … the list goes on.
Each of these demands immediate attention, and I find it extraordinary that the City Council could put a non-issue, the placement of newspaper racks downtown, on the fast track and come up with a ridiculous ordinance that involved an inordinate amount of staff time and very little input from the public or the affected entities.
The People Have Spoken
Wed., November 4, 2009 - 8:00am
The people have spoken, and unfortunately it was decided to continue with an unfair, unethical and immoral tax that foists the burden of collecting money on one small segment of the community that suffers an economic loss because of it. The size of this defeat was staggering, but if I were to do it over, I wouldn't change a thing. We simply had too big a hole to climb out of.
Vegas & Other Happenings
May 14, 2009
It’s been a while since I visited this blog. A number of things have been going on to divert my attention.
1. I went to a college reunion in Las Vegas in mid-April with 15 ol’ fraternity brothers from Indiana University. Don’t worry, though, no one did a keg stand, although we did semi-trash a banquet room at The Palm Restaurant in Caesar’s.
An Informative Email
April 9, 2009
After my rebuttal to Jeff Golden appeared in the Tidings on March 31, I received a call from Jeff who “had a beef” about my characterization of him as not working hard. So I placed an apology in both the Tidings and the Sneak Preview. In that apology, I mentioned that I was upset that he referred to cranky restaurant owners, and he also demonized Realtors.
Meals tax: it doesn't add up
April 6, 2009
I feel compelled to respond to Jeff Golden's revisionist history about the meals tax (see March 28 Tidings column "And you thought the meals tax was settled"). The proposal did not pass by a narrow margin in March 1993. It won by almost 9 percent. A subsequent recall effort in November 1993 narrowly lost by .05 percent.
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