The Chief’s $342, 381 retirement payout was
questioned tonight:
Q: Your resolution for Chief Caruso’s retirement
payout states that he is entitled to 3 month’s severance pay as per written
agreement. This came to $46,852.68. “Severance” is not mentioned anywhere in the
Chief’s contract. Where did this come
from?
Marc Schrieks said he was in agreement with me that
severance wasn’t in the contract and they didn’t think they had to pay it but
they lost in court last year. Either he
or Luna said a judge ruled against them when they challenged Officer Piscitello’s
severance pay. They said “Past Practices”
grant the right to severance even though it’s not in the contract.
I said I would like to see the judge’s ruling to see
if it applied to this situation.
They then said it came from an arbitrator. They haven’t challenged anything since. They haven’t introduced anything to change
it.
Q: Why did you calculate his severance based on
$ 187,410.72 and not his base salary of $167,331? Why would you use a 12% longevity bonus in
your calculations?
Mr. DiMaria argued that the longevity pay was treated
as part of his base salary.
Q: Why did you use the longevity pay for pension
purposes? Aren’t you only supposed to
report the annual base salary?
This discussion went all over the place. Mr. DiMaria argued that they always treated
his longevity pay as part of the base salary when reporting pension numbers.
I stated if that were the case, and you look at the
pension numbers over the last 10 years, you would see a pattern if he perhaps received
a 2% raise each year. But if there was a
spike towards the end of his career, longevity might not have been reported as
part of the base salary all along.
This was left unresolved.
Q: Last October and the year before that, this
administration told the State that it eliminated longevity awards for
non-union employees. Your answers were
certified by Mr. Luna and Mr. Cuccia.
Did you eliminate these awards by ordinance or resolution?
Nobody in the administration could answer this. At one point, they claimed they eliminated
longevity bonuses for new employees in the most recent contracts.
It was established that they didn’t eliminate
longevity from recent union or non-union contracts nor did they do it for new
employees. They never passed a
resolution or an ordinance. Marc will
have to look into to this in order to explain why Mr. Luna and Mr. Cuccia certified
answers on the “Best Practices” questionnaire that were not true.
In other news,
- Luna stated that the $1,080,000 special emergency
appropriation will cover retirement payouts for only 5 employees. He did not budget anything for these
retirements when he made his most recent budget.
- Deputy Mayor Licata was asked: “How many hours does Joe Licata supposedly work when he bills Lodi for
$550”.
Mrs. Licata screamed her loudest yet. She said that I don’t really want the answer
and she wouldn’t give one.
I responded that she gets paid to sit up there. If she refuses to answer a question, she
shouldn’t sit up there. I stated that her family got more for
themselves in such a short period of time than anyone else sitting on the council.
I explained that the Lodi council disperses the money for the Lodi Drug Alliance. Less money should be flowing to the Deputy
Mayor’s son.
