LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Where's The Outrage Over City Clerk's Salary?

Last year, Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez sat on the dais as a Lake Elsinore City Councilwoman and asked “Where is the outrage?” when discussing the exorbitant salary and benefits package of terminated City Manager Bob Brady.

A short year later, the Lake Elsinore City Council is considering a Brady-esque pay raise for City Clerk Virginia Bloom.

I’m sure Ms. Bloom has a done a great job for the city, a job that resulted in a pay raise last year.  What is troubling to me is in the past year the city hired an assistant city clerk to help with Ms. Bloom’s workload, which would indicate her pay raise is an effort to offset the work she is no longer required to complete.

While the phrase “tough economic times” is extremely overused these days, how can our city, not far removed from staff cuts and budget trimming, justify a $10,000 pay raise this year, and another $10,000 pay raise next year?  Who in our city has ever received a 20% pay raise in a two-year period, except for Bob Brady of course?

Obligating our city to increase the city clerk’s pay by a combined $20,000 over the next two years is absurd, not to mention they are obligating our tax dollars for next year, based on work that hasn’t even been completed.

So, the question that then-Councilwoman Melendez asked, “Where is the outrage?” is a fair one, considering there doesn’t seem to be any.

I believe in a fair day’s wages for a hard day’s work, but is a $20,000 raise over a two-year period fair to the taxpayers of Lake Elsinore? --Ronald Paulk