Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : City OKd Extra Funds for Official, Mayor Says

Insisting he had no intention to mislead, Mayor Arnie Rodio conceded Wednesday the City Council voted this week to pay thousands of dollars a year extra into City Manager Jim Gilley’s retirement fund, despite council members’ claims they had only extended the term of Gilley’s contract.

In an interview, Gilley also acknowledged that the council’s closed-door vote Monday means the city will pay on his behalf, as a performance bonus, an additional $9,750 per year for the next four years into his retirement fund, the state’s Public Employees Retirement System (PERS).

At Monday’s council meeting, Rodio and other council members publicly announced they were extending Gilley’s contract by three years, until August, 1997. In interviews that night, council members insisted that was the only change. And they stressed they were not increasing Gilley’s $127,194 annual salary.

But Rodio confirmed the city’s added payments for Gilley after some details of the plan began to surface Tuesday and Wednesday. He blamed the council’s unwillingness Monday to reveal the planned payments on the secrecy of the negotiation process, but still said it was not a salary hike.

“When I think of a raise for an individual, I think of a guy getting a bigger paycheck,” Rodio said, stressing that will not be the case. And Rodio said council members had been told by City Atty. David McEwen not to discuss the details of the deal until its final public council vote July 6.

The salary issue is a sensitive one in the city because the council months ago announced it could not grant any cost-of-living pay increases to the city’s non-union employees, citing tough financial conditions. For that reason, some council members were hesitant to give Gilley a direct raise.

The retirement payments still will provide Gilley, 44, with an economic benefit, though it will be more indirect than a salary increase. The city’s extra payments will save Gilley having to spend his own money to regain lost retirement credits and restore them sooner.

According to Gilley, he withdrew his retirement funds from the state’s PERS system when his original 1981 to 1988 term as city manager ended because of disputes with council members. He worked in the private sector for three years before being rehired by a new City Council in August, 1991.

Since then, Gilley said he has been having $9,750 per year deducted from his city paycheck to go to PERS to restore his retirement credits, a process that would have taken eight years. Gilley said the city will now match his own continuing payments, effectively cutting his obligation in half.

As a result, Gilley said, his retirement status will be restored by the time his proposed extended contract with the city expires in 1997. But Gilley said the city’s payments will not affect his salary or his take-home pay in coming years.