Information provided by the city in answer to a public records request for 201 payments (including overtime, bonuses, etc.) to all City of Ocean Shores employees:
City of Ocean Shores 2012 salaries, all
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Home of...The Immaculate Jagoffs of Pittsburgh 
Tom, you’re an ass, and cannot write a straight sentence to save your life. Read the first line of your bio at the top of the header. Suck one D bag!
Let me go back to work and show you how!
Rather than sit in that fat leather chair watching garbage on TV why don’t you get out in the garage and polish that $900,000 ladder truck you never use except for joy rides and parades.
Generally havoc?
Tom, your trolls suck 🙂
Not more than the trolls on the Ocean Shores city payroll.
Reading this list of comments could lead one to believe that all intelligent life in O/S is gone.
I never knew the city had a zoo with a simian display. Yet here they appear to be throwing their feces at the people who feed them. How rude.
Some of the city’s finest on display no less! They really do earn the union label. Sold their souls to the devil, that lot. Certainly hasn’t changed my opinion of them. Thugs and goons.
I don’t know, I see the point of publishing the highest salaries of city employees, or those of elected officials, but putting every salary out there by name seems a bit meanspirited. Certainly, it’s your right to do so and I would defend that but … this seems a bit harsh and plays to the demonization of city line staff, don’t you think? There are good people who work for the city, just trying to make a living, who have families and are valuable members of the community. In most cases, city employee pay seems reasonable and comparable. The total size of the payroll is daunting, though.
So, what is the point of publishing the salary of every city employee, especially by name? What conclusions do you draw from this? Are you implying there is something wrong with the pay rate of all city employees? Where is your analysis? How does this compare with other Grays Harbor municipalities?
The point is to provide information to taxpayers. Let them see the salary/bonus etc. structure – and allow THEM to decide who they think if overpaid, under-compensated or paid just right.
Are you sure that’s your goal here Tom?
Yes.
Scanlon, thank God you’re no longer here….but too bad you’re still letting people know how much I’m makin…
Before public employees were underpaid but got great retirement and other benefits compared to private employees. Now they get exorbitant pay and fantastic benefits compared to private employees. Most retired Ocean Shores taxpayers and non-retired taxpayers have never experienced such extravagant Ocean Shores pay and benefits. In Ocean Shores there is no history or tradition of excellence to justify such extravagance nor is there any learning from blunders and mistakes. Unions and those sitting in the mayor’s chair, some of the council chairs don’t mind skinning taxpayers over and over again. The profit motive of private industry is nonexistent. There is no motivation in Ocean Shores to learn and change. Keep the exorbitant pay and benefits rolling in is the motivation. Ocean Shores makes mistakes and does not learn. It does not need to make a profit. It can just skin tax payers more. If you want to be a public employee every bit of your pay and benefits is open to public scrutiny under transparency laws. If you don’t like that you can get a job in the real world and then you can avoid public scrutiny.
I have to disagree that all city employees receive exorbitant pay. Salaries in the 40-60k range are not exorbitant. That’s a basic middle class family income (40-80k), and barely that on the low end. Median household income in the U.S. in 2006 was about $48K. Average U.S. household income in prime earning years (45-54) was nearly $65K.
I won’t disagree, however, that certain unions gained a sweetheart deal under McEachin as he slipped out the back door. Economic times were better then but ….
Maybe the real issue is that Ocean Shores, with its large footprint, infrastructure and small population, has never been and is not now self sustaining.
The “large footprint, infrastructure and small population” argument has worn out its welcome long ago. Aberdeen has the same road and infrastructure length. Population has to do with delivery of services that impact humans. Who cares. The infrastructure has been paid for by the property owners in Road, Sewer, and water LIDs. The ongoing operations are paid for by ratepayers. The General Fund issues are separate from the utilities. The utilities are separated by law into their own. Trying to compare municipality to municipality is silly in a system that pays people based upon a common source, AWC. So, if you use one book to pay everyone, it is hard to have any variance. The variance really exists in the skill sets. You can call someone Director of XYZ, City Clerk, Mayor, Tres., Clerk I, Clerk II, Clerk II or anything else. But you can’t pay based upon title. You have to pay based upon skills. Also, those skills have to be increased by the individual over time and not based upon getting an AA or BA in English Composition or some unrelated degree. Comparison should be made to the private sector. What do clerks make there? How much do they pay the people who mow the lawns, clean the parking lots, and empty trash. How much do they pay people to read dials on an automated plant? How much do they pay a lab tech in a private water sampling lab? How much do they pay the plumber that clears a line? The fact that we have low flow in the system could be resolved by clearing the lines with the water they dump on the ground when they clear the water lines. Do that work when the system is at low volumes. If we are always using consultants, why do we need staff? Maybe it all should be outsourced for management. Maybe we should focus on hiring better and stop the “friends and family” programs. I wonder how many people we could hire like we did the librarian? Higher skills at a lower wage to reflect the true market value of that person is the answer.
The majority of people in the U.S. live in large metro areas where pay & cost of living are higher than in small rather isolated places. That’s why ‘national averages’ are not a very good way to determine specific pay levels. The mentioned O.S. salaries ARE very high compared to the cost of living. This is a very real problem for O.S. NOW that affects many. And these employees (& their families) continue their pathetic pleas & acts for more, more, & still more. If they truly “love Ocean Shores” it would show in their actions.
Let the free market work in the labor market like it does in the housing market and anything exorbitant will get leveled out and there would be no arguments. When unions and managers distort economic reality is when the trouble begins. In economics just as in the laws of nature the chickens always come home to roost. If Ocean Shores citizens don’t want to pay what they think is extravagant remuneration and don’t want the mediocre services that they are getting that is their decision and no others. The representatives are supposed to represent voters not their own personal or employee wants.
Looking for Balance: You are right and that would be wonderful, if only our employees would let us However, the union contracts intentionally prevent a leveling of the field to reflect what the market will bear or what the comparable jobs and skill sets get paid in this area. The unions have refused to lower salaries to meet declining revenues, forcing the city to reduce the number of employees and therefore reducing the level of service. This of course also impacts the approximately 1/2 our employees who even live here. The others don’t really care as long as they are not on the cut list. To be fair a number of employees have really stepped up and increased their efforts to help the cause, others have adopted the attitude that if it is not done today they will get paid the same to get to it later. In point of fact the longer it takes the more secure their jobs. And the ultimate overseer is clueless as to what it takes to properly perform anything beyond attending more rubber chicken touchy feely dinners. So she relies on the employees to set the standard. And so we pay and pay and get less. But “don’t worry,be happy”.
The premises are the union contracts are the cause of imbalance and the ultimate overseer can’t or is unable to oversee which causes more imbalance. What can we argue as to what the solutions are to these two stated premises. Are the solutions individual ones like tuning and dropping out or can it be one that solves the taxpaying community’s problem as a whole?
Excellent point. Giving up, shutting up, or just accepting the status quo will never change it. The first step toward change is awareness; enough people need to want change. The only value in criticism is the hope that those being criticized will see a need to change. The less they listen the louder the criticism needs to be. This blog is one of the ways people can begin the process of letting others know how they see things. There is a realistic fear of retaliation or ridicule if those same feelings are expressed in a public arena; nevertheless they are valid thoughts and opinions. I would venture to say that the opinions expressed here have a far greater validity as a representative cross-section than those the mayor is so proud of in her “monkey poll”. So after gathering information and forming our own opinions we should transmit those opinions to the elected officials to act upon and if they don’t we should continue to object,criticize, and replace them. After all, we pay dearly for the right.
Interesting, the median household income in Ocean Shores is $20,000 less than the statewide median (roughly $36k vs $56k in 2009). That’s pretty depressing. In 2007 the average government salary in Ocean Shores was $50, 486 (city-data.com). Is $4,000 a month exorbitant?
Good that you could use 2007 data to compare to 2009 data. How about using the 2010 census data and the 2010 salaries? How about 2011 or 2012? How about using Tom’s data and figure out the average, without the temporary help shown by 0 hours.
Why visitors still use to read news papers when in this
technological globe everything is accessible on net?