California, MD — A deep division within the St. Mary’s County Metropolitan Commission (MetCom) surged front and center with the April 27 vote on next fiscal year’s operating budget. When the dust had settled the vote was 4-3 to approve the county’s water and sewer agency’s budget which had been taken to public hearing. It took Chairman Steve Willing (pictured, left) to cast the vote that broke the tie.
Criticism of the budget was initiated at the April 27 meeting by commission member Bryan “Puff” Barthelme, who criticized giving a one percent Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) and one STEP increase to every MetCom employee, from the highest paid to the lowest. He used one employee’s salary of $165,894 as an example. He said that would balloon to $173,682, an $8,000 increase, while lower level employees were receiving only a $1,000 increase.
Although Barthelme did not identify which employee he was talking about, it is believed he was referring to the salary of MetCom attorney Jacquelyn Meiser. No one else makes that much on the staff and her salary is higher than Executive Director Scott Bundy’s annual pay.
“I think the way we are going about that (the salary increase) is wrong. We are not taking care of our workers as well as the top end,” Barthelme said, adding with those salaries in the budget he could not support it.
Commission member Mike Mummaugh then hopped on the four new employees in the budget, saying contractors could be used if the current staff could not handle the work. Staff then went over each new proposed employee and presented a justification. At the end Willing said he felt the case had been made for the new positions
In addition to the new employees, the commission is also filling five vacancies, including the position of deputy director, which had been approved but not been filled in recent years.
MetCom Vice Chairman Bob Russell moved to approve the proposed operating budget with its rate structure that includes across the board rate increases. Barthelme, Mummaugh and member Charles “Sonny” Pessagno voted against it, requiring the tie breaker from Willing.
The operating budget includes $9.5 million for the sewer division and $5.2 million in the water division. The proposed capital budget of $79.6 million passed without a negative vote, but it also drew comments from Mummaugh.
The commission has been amassing borrowed monies for capital projects to the tune of $40 million that because of project delays have been sitting and drawing interest. Mummaugh said he for one didn’t know that the cash had been building up. “I had no idea we were not using the $40 million,” he said.
Bundy has vowed that it will not happen again under his new watch. But Mummaugh asked for monthly reports of how much had been borrowed and how it was being used to keep better track of accumulating debt service.
The approved operating budget included a cap on charges for customer usage of 10,000 gallons per month to prevent some of the high charges under the commission’s new rate structure initiated last year., The structure is based on usage and those using irrigation for lawns and gardens were particularly hard hit.
At the beginning of the meeting Bundy had recommended that the commission institute the 10,000-gallon cap beginning with the May bill instead of waiting for the July 1 start of the fiscal year. But on advice from Meiser, Bundy said later in the meeting they could not do that because it would require a public hearing and there wasn’t time to do that.
MetCom and the county commissioners have a joint meeting scheduled for May 10 to discuss among other things the commission’s rate stricture.
Contact Dick Myers at dick.myers@thebaynet.com