BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY
bmcgillivary@record-eagle.com
TRAVERSE CITY — A divided Grand Traverse County Road Commission struggled early this summer to find $40,000 to pilot a maintenance operation to preserve road edges.
Two months later, on Aug. 11, road commission staffers announced they'd located an extra $420,000 in revenue for the year. The new-found bounty was reported at the same meeting that road commission Manager Mary Gillis sought and received 2.5 percent raises for all administrative staff.
Gillis will receive a $2,475 raise to boost her salary to $101,475.
Road commissioners also agreed to seek bids on two new trucks and a passenger vehicle to be used as take-home rides for Gillis and her top administrators.
The raises alone cost taxpayers $18,500, not including taxes, overtime, and other employment costs. Road Commissioners Jim Maitland and Walter Hooper voted yes. Dave Taylor voted no.
In November, the road commission wants voters to approve a 1-mill property tax for road rehabilitation that would raise about $4.3 million a year.
County officials differed on how voters might view a spate of raises for a road department that's cut services amid complaints of revenue declines and lean budgets. The new raises include a 3-percent boost for union employees.
"I don't think we have much of a chance right now of getting a millage through and I don't think this helped at all, not at all," Taylor said. "Two months ago we're so broke we can't do maintenance, and now we have all this money. How could that happen?"
Maitland and Hooper said voters shouldn't consider the millage request and staff raises in the same light.
"I think people will understand there are cost-of-living increases and contracts you have to fulfill," Maitland said. "I don't think people expect us to maintain 20-year-old vehicles and keep them on the road. It gets too expensive."
Figures that Gillis used to determine raises were based on Midwest urban regions of 50,000 to 1.5 million, and showed a seasonally adjusted increase in the consumer price index of 1.7 percent from June 2009 until June 2010.
The southwest Michigan region showed a 0.2 percent increase for the same period. Gillis also cited a 2.9 percent increase by looking at the time period from May 2009 to May 2010.
"To me, it looks like we are paying people a living wage," Gillis said.
County Commissioner Christine Maxbauer said voters likely will have a different view.
"It's going to have an impact on voters," Maxbauer said. "The minute the road commission finds extra money, they spend it on staff, not roads. Voters are not going to approve a millage so staff can get raises and new vehicles."
Gillis said raises and vehicles already were in the budget, and the road commission allocated about $250,000 of the found money to road maintenance, with the remainder held in reserve.
Maitland said new vehicles have been in the budget for two years, and commissioners postponed the purchases last year.
"We thought the price of vehicles might be cheap right now so we decided to go out for bids," he said.
The road commission's practice is to assign new vehicles to administrators, and hand down their vehicles to lower-tier personnel.
Gillis currently drives a 2005 Ford Explorer with 110,000 miles.
"If the voters don't like it, they'll tell us," Hooper said.
