Council rehires Rolling Meadows secretary

The Rolling Meadows city manager's secretary won't have to take home her picture frames or pen holder after all. This week the city council voted to keep her job. She was supposed to be laid off on Friday.

Facing tough budget times, the council voted 4-3 on Jan. 13 to fire the secretary, who earned $100,000, including salary and benefits. A week later, the council talked about the position again behind closed doors and on Tuesday the group voted 5-2 to rehire her at a lesser salary. Aldermen Larry Buske, Barb Lusk, Tom Rooney, Kathy Kwandras and Jim Larsen voted in favor of rehiring the secretary. Alderman John Pitzaferro and Glenn Adams voted against the idea.

"We need this person who has a lot of experience to help the new city manager," Buske said. "So I voted yes. This has been dragged out in the media for too long. We're starting to look like a bunch of idiots."

Before he retired in December, former City Manager Tom Melena asked the city council to exempt his secretary from upcoming layoffs. Melena wanted to keep the secretary on the city's payroll, but suggested reducing her regular salary and benefit package from $100,000 to about $78,000. Melena proposed his secretary work four days a week in exchange for the decrease.

At the time, council members didn't buy it.

However the plan approved this week has the secretary working five days a week and earning about $75,000, including benefits. That's less than in Arlington Heights, which pays its executive sectaries between $80,000 and $90,000, including benefits.

Alderman Glenn Adams voted against the latest proposal.

"I looked at what secretaries were getting paid in the private sector and it still wasn't this much," Adams said. "I just think it's not fair, especially with today's economy."

Mayor Ken Nelson said he and the council were wrong to talk about the secretary's job during open session meetings, which are also broadcast on a local cable channel.

"We should never have been talking about this in open session," he said. "For that, I'll take some of the blame. I have no problem talking about staffing in open session, but we were talking about an individual here."

Nelson said he agreed with rehiring the secretary because city officials found extra money in the budget to pay her.

"There was an error in the budget," he said. "Basically, it was a double entry having to do with the retirement of the former city manager."

On Dec. 2, the council approved a 2009 budget that included eight layoffs to come from the city's police, fire, public works, finance and administration departments. The council also backed adding a 5 percent electricity tax to dig the city out of debt. The extra tax will bring in $1.3 million annually, and next year it will be used to pay off a $500,000 debt from 2007 and up to $1 million in debt expected from 2008.

Rolling Meadows residents also will be paying more property taxes, since the council also approved a 7.4 percent property tax increase that will mostly fund police and fire pensions.

On Friday Rolling Meadows officials will lay off seven school crossing guards to save about $56,000. Instead of the part-time employees, the intersections will be covered by police officers, according to city officials.

Sarah Phillips, the city's new manager as of Dec. 12, was on vacation this week and unavailable to comment.