Part-time contracts for city manager, police chief hold up budget vote

A stalemate on $6,501 in health benefits killed a proposed part-time employment agreement between

Corning and City Manager Steve Kimbrough Tuesday.

The City Council’s 2-2 vote, in turn, led to tabling a vote on a similar part-time agreement with Police chief Tony Cardenas, and a vote on a proposed balanced 2010-11 general budget.

This is the second time Councilmen Ross Turner and John Leach have voted against the proposed part-time employment of Kimbrough.

“I commend both of your gentlemen’s offers,” Turner said to Kimbrough and Cardenas. “But, why can’t you give up the $6,501 in health benefits.”

Mayor Gary Strack, who voted for the agreement, responded to Turner’s comment, “Why can’t you take the 10 percent cut you asked all the employees to take?”

Kimbrough and Cardenas made the offers to go part-time in June to help balance a nearly $1 million general budget deficit and prevent the loss of city employees.

That offer was approved by the City Council, but ironing out the details between the city and the administrators has been met with a few wrinkles.

Turner and Leach feel the part-time agreement should be for salaries and state required minimum benefits only, which excludes the $6,000 in health benefits.

The city currently pays an annual sum of $13,002 toward health benefits for each Kimbrough and Cardenas.

As a full-time employee, Kimbrough is paid annual wages of $106,616, and Cardenas $91,866. If both men  went part-time, it would have saved the city nearly $200,000 a year.

To make financial ends meet, both administrators said they would have to take early retirement, as well as working the allowed 960 hours per year for the city.

“My intent was to save the city money, but still have enough to live on,” Kimbrough said. “To do that, I would need to receive part-time health benefits.”

Turner questioned Kimbrough’s early retirement.

“Isn’t early retirement considered to be 55-years-old?” he asked.

“Early retirement is retiring earlier than you had planned on,” stated the 63-year-old Kimbrough. “My plans were to retire in July 2013. So for me this is early retirement.”

The proposed agreement also provided Kimbrough and Cardenas with the city paying $24.50 a month in group life insurance, $6.60 per month toward the state disability insurance plan, and the employer’s share toward FICA and Medicaid.

Although it was a three-year agreement, it left Kimbrough as an “at-will” employee, making it possible for the City Council to remove him from employment “if wrong doing is substantiated.”

After the split decision, Strack said it was pointless to continue with the other items on the agenda – the proposed agreement between Cardenas, and the proposed 2010-11 budget, which was based on the two administrators going into part-time status.

“We will have to throw this budget out completely,” Kimbrough said. “We (the city) will be broke by the end of next year.”

A motion by Turner to leave the 2010-11 budget for the newly seated council to deal with following the November election died on a split vote, this time Strack and Councilwoman Toni Parkins dissented.

“We are right there with the state governor who said he would leave the state budget for the next governor to deal with,” Strack said. “Now we are doing the same thing.”