We have too many politicians in Montgomery County to start with. That’s why I’ve started Reconstructing Dayton to move toward sensible, accountable and transparent government. While our population has been stagnant for decades, we’ve allowed one new “city” after another appear- and add even more positions for political noobs.
Clayton (13,000 [1]) and Riverside (25,000 [2]) are the two latest townships turned into “cities”- while Miami Township (50,000 [3]) has grown by leaps and bounds- and is still governed by a form of government meant for sparsely populated rural areas.
So, when you consider that entire counties like Frankilin in Columbus or Indianapolis can be run by a single government, you have to wonder why do we feel the need to have a Mayor and a City Manager for the podunk patches known as Moraine (6,500 [4]) or Brookville (5,800 [5]). Throw in all the school boards, and different courts- and what we have is a ton of overhead.
Mayor Nan Whaley (Dayton, population 140,782 [6]) loves overhead. It’s how she creates jobs for her friends and family. Not only is she an overpaid figurehead mayor who doesn’t know her place getting paid $56,500 a year, she has a full time aide making almost as much. For what? By charter, we’re a city manager form of government. No one ever told Nan this. She thinks it’s her job to run things.
I bet you can name the CEO of Apple (Tim Cook) and of Tesla (Elon Musk) and probably a few other big firms. I bet none of you can name the members of the board of directors. That’s because they aren’t supposed to run the company. That’s how the City Manager form of government is supposed to be set up- the City Manager is the professional who is hired and well paid to run our city. Mark Schwieterman is an excellent example of a City Manager- working with a much larger commission- and delivering solid, measurable results in Kettering (population 55,405 [7]).
Shelly Dickstein is constantly dancing around her highness Nan’s proclamations about what she is doing as Mayor- when in fact, that’s not her role. The city commission is supposed to set clear goals and objectives for the City Manager- and measure her performance. They are supposed to oversee her purchasing decisions- and her recommendations for operations of the city. That they meet weekly in a Commission meeting is already probably twice the times that should be needed- and that they also meet for illegal “work sessions” is a travesty.
Especially when you consider the median income of a family of 4 in Dayton under Nan and her clown crew- is only $32,540 [8].
The first measurement of your value to the citizens of DaIyton should be that they aren’t in poverty. Under Nan’s rule- she makes almost 3x the per-capita income of $19,873 (ibid) for a job that’s specified to only take a few hours a week.
It’s not time to give the Mayor and the Commission a raise- it’s time to tie their paychecks to per-capita income, and give them a real incentive to take Dayton out of poverty- some of which is caused by having to support these idiots and their ridiculous ideas of self worth. Why does the director of the 12 person Downtown Dayton Partnership make over $200,000 when Dickstein has a responsibility for 100x the staff and budget?
Why does the Superintendent of a failing school district, the worst in the State- get a raise to over $200,000 with a declining enrollment and failing all grades? Because the school board president (Mohamed Al-Hamdani) is the same idiot who is pushing for a switch to a full-time mayor.
Because voters are stupid enough to think that these positions and lines on a map can’t be changed and are somehow written in stone. If they vote to approve any of these ideas- they are setting the stage for even more incompetence and corruption.
The committee has recommended a new way to calculate the mayor’s and city commissioners’ compensation, which if approved by voters would result in pay increases….
“The role of mayor deserves someone who can put the time into it that it requires in our current moment,” Whaley said during her annual address. “It also cannot be left only to people who are independently wealthy, are in retirement or, like me, choose not to have children.”
Dayton’s charter review committee has decided to recommend a handful of proposed charter amendments.
The amendments are expected to head to the city commission for consideration to be placed on the ballot. The changes have to be approved by voters.
The committee discussed proposed charter language that would declare the mayor’s position as full time. But members ultimately voted 5-2 in favor of making other changes to the language about the mayor’s responsibilities….
Stanley Earley, a member of the committee,..said the best chance to get the best elected officials is to “maximize” the pool of potential candidates.
He said political hopefuls should not have to risk giving up their careers to become the mayor.
Williamson said some people work two full-time jobs and thinks it’s plausible that Dayton residents can fulfill the mayor’s responsibilities without having to give up their other occupations.
The committee also recommended a charter amendment to change the method for determining the compensation of the mayor and city commissioners.
Under the proposal, city leaders’ pay would be tied to the salaries of the Montgomery County board of commissioners.
The mayor would earn 75% of the highest county commissioner salary, and city commissioners would earn half the highest salary.
Right now, the mayor’s and commissioners’ pay is determined by a compensation board appointed by the city commission.
The mayor earns about $56,500 annually and the commissioners about $47,800, city staff said. The county commissioners will earn about $107,690 this year.
Mohamed Al-Hamdani was one of the two committee members to vote in favor of charter language to make the mayor full time.
He said he thinks the city needs and deserves a fulltime mayor, given the considerable and growing responsibilities of the office. He said he is worried one day the city could have a mayor who doesn’t take the role seriously and puts minimal or insufficient effort into their work.
“For the record, I think it’s a mistake to do that,” he said, referring to the committee’s decision to approve alternative language. “I think we’re letting the past dictate our future here.”
Al-Hamdani also said he doesn’t see the point in increasing the mayor’s pay if office-holders won’t be asked to do more work.
Whaley said she wished the charter committee would have included language stating the role is full time, because she thinks citizens will not tolerate anything less.
But, Whaley said, she’s pleased with new language that will better spell out the mayor’s responsibilities, and the compensation changes are good news.
“This is part of government — you don’t get everything you exactly want, and that’s part of the process, and I appreciate that,” she said. “I would have preferred to put ‘full time’ in, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Source: Full-time mayor label sputters out – Dayton Daily News [9]
The way we select our Mayor and Commissioners in a stupid special election to narrow the field needs to be changed to a single ranked choice election where we pick 3 seats one cycle and 2 the next. Whoever has the most votes- gets the nod as mayor. See the plan on the Reconstructing Dayton site. [10]
As to compensation, we would do much better to eliminate any urban township income tax shelters in densely populated parts of an urban county- and draw the threshold for an independent city at 50,000. Forcing podunks to band together would be a good first step. Moving to a single unified government should be the goal. We don’t need this many politicians, meetings, or tax districts to clean the streets, supply water and trash, have a functioning police, fire and court system.
And most importantly, we don’t need a full-time Mayor and a full time City Manager- it’s either or- and I vote for the professional manager over the professional politician any day of the week.
I worked 36 to 40 hours a week “part time.” I paced myself and as such I was the most accessible mayor in recent history. Making time to meet with real citizens or stopping by local businesses to talk with the owners. The job could consume you if you let it. You could work from 8AM to 12PM 7 days a week if you went to every event you get invited to AND the city pays for the admission ticket! That cost can rack up for charity events. I reduced the travel and training budget for my position by $48,000 a year from day one and the postage budget dropped by several thousand dollars because I didn’t send cards and letters out the way Ms. McLin did. I used email. When budget cuts were called for in 2010 the commission office had zero problems meeting the cuts because I was not a drain on resources. I never used a city car, I never had a pay phone the city would pay for, I declined the car allowance stipend and the “official business” free parking pass, I only went to Columbus twice in 4 years, once to meet the governor and once as a witness at a liquor control board hearing where the bar owner took the plea when she saw me enter the room. I paid my own expenses and submitted receipts for reimbursement never seeking the per diem allowance that I was informed the current mayor requested to profit from her trip. I declined a trip to Israel that Nan jumped on to take in my stead and called me at home to let me know she decided not to go because she realized it would make her look bad. We sent a staff member in my place. I paid for my own trip to Turkey because it was a scouting mission, not guaranteed to bring business to Dayton. My take on this. If you want to increase the salary fine. Take away the perks. Make the elected officials pay or their own charity tickets from their pockets or… Read more »
The city manager, like the DPS superintendent is an appointee. Why would you want someone in place who you can’t really vote out? Aren’t we seeing this in effect at DPS right now?
And to scary Gary – there’s a fine line between being frugal and failing to advocate for constituents. Are you going to take another 3 month vacation to fix your roof? At least Joey Williams got a deck made and still showed up to work ;)
Cletus, I NEVER took 3 months off to fix my roof. I attended every commission meeting, every school board meeting and anything that was important during the month of September, 2010. My box gutters were shot and I had a waterfall when it rained and mushrooms growing out of my wall in the bathroom. Lucas Sullivan, the DDN reporter who wrote the story was put up by Nan to call me to find out why I had lightened my schedule for a few weeks. I asked him to come by the house before he wrote the story to see the extent of the work. It involved tearing down a fire escape, rebuilding a large section of roof and box gutter and, it was a slate roof and the gutters I fabricated out of sheets of copper and they had to all be riveted and soldered properly. Five roofing companies were contacted by me. Four refused the job. Including the Amish! The fifth wanted $45,000. I bought all the materials and tools and did it myself for $10,000. Two weeks after the news article Lucas Sullivan called me at home. He had decided to take a look at my house some days earlier and wanted to apologize to me for writing the story. He didn’t realize the scope of the work. That apology was never common knowledge and Nan joked about the whole thing when she was campaigning. I doubt she has ever worked on a roof. I suggest you get all your facts straight before you cast smart remarks. I did my own work and still showed up to do the peoples work. Joey sat on his laurels and got others to do it for him and look what that got him in the end. Here is the original story http://thisoldcrackhouse.blogspot.com/2010/08/saga-of-roof.html
there is more here http://thisoldcrackhouse.blogspot.com/2010/09/
and even more here http://thisoldcrackhouse.blogspot.com/2010/10/
I suggest you read it and learn the truth. Not the stories you were told.
Having all of those small governments surrounding Dayton is a good thing. If you lived in any of the adjacent jurisdictions (Clayton?) would you really want the clown show at Dayton City Hall running your affairs?
Considering your suburb would be outnumbered vastly by the larger population in Dayton proper, you’d never have a say in how your city was run anymore.
Every single adjacent city to Dayton owes its existence to one reason: they incorporated as discrete entities specifically to avoid being annexed by Dayton.
Kettering (Van Buren Township)
Moraine (Van Buren Township)
Riverside (Mad River Township)
Huber (Wayne Township)
Trotwood (Madison Township)
And Beavercreek has a convoluted history prior to its incorporation in 1980 for the exact same reason – Dayton had gotten an Ohio Supreme Court ruling permitting the annexation of land on the other side of a county line.
The same dynamic was at play when Centerville tried to annex Washington Township – the vote was over 10 to 1 against annexation in the township (although it passed in the city).
Until Nan and the clowns can all be dumped – nobody else wants to be a part of it.