At his final meeting with the Winder City Council, outgoing Mayor Chip Thompson orchestrated the approval of 3-percent raises for all city employees.
But in a move to address concerns about adding an unbudgeted expense in the middle of the fiscal year, the council took away the Christmas bonuses that city workers were anticipating this month.
The annual cost of the raises will be about $200,000. With half of the current fiscal year over and the $44,000 in bonuses eliminated, the net impact to the current year’s budget should be roughly $56,000.
In keeping with a political strategy that has worked throughout his four-year term, Thompson kept at least half of the council and even key administrators out of the loop until last Friday, when the agendas for Monday’s work session and Tuesday’s voting session were published.
In the aftermath of the vote, the person who stands to lose the most is Mayor-elect David Maynard, who told a roomful of city police officers, firefighters and other employees that he could not support the raises. His was the only no vote in the 5 to 1 council action.
He said he didn’t want employees to take his vote as an indication that he doesn’t support or love them as much as any other city leader, but he said he felt a responsibility to Winder’s citizens as well.
For the full story, see the December 7 issue of the the Barrow Journal.
And Winder employees should be asking why they get a better benefit than they do.
Government does not exist to provide employment or to 'help' employees but to provide necessary services.
But, congratulations to the outgoing mayor for creating one last mess.
Winder has been wanting to re-establish a property tax every since it was eliminated in 1974. The elected officials will tell you that the worst thing that ever happened was a total elimination of the tax because no council wants to be the first to re-establish a property tax. There has been talk of putting a small quarter of a mill tax on in the past, but the politicians don't have the guts to be the first. The idea is a quarter of a mill now and then once that is done, it is no problem to raise the millage in small incriments until they get it up to where they were before the 74' rollback.
Many of them are having $ issues , family issues caused by $ issues! Just like everyone esle , and 3% want Stop these issues but will help. And lets remember most of the people that are jobless or having $ issues , somewhere they had someone choise , to lay them off or even give a raise or not. The city Choose to help, Yes Not all agree with it but alot of things happen in the city that people dont agree with ! If we want to save $ lets Not worry about the $ we spend on guy doing the work of two in the field! Bc theres alot setting in offices making three times that!