>I’m confused! So please explain to me the reasoning for Dr. Gabbert’s increase.
1. Did he do a wonderful job and save the Village thousands of dollars? If, so, why are our taxes going up by 7%? Where are the savings? The initial termination of employees last year, was followed this year by substantial rehirings! The budget this year is substantially greater than last year! Essential services have been reduced. Snowplowing, street paving, the Library, etc…
2. What is the rational: That he is entitled to a raise, since union employees got raises (as a result of his negotiation of the their contracts)? If so, then the more of a raise in the Union contract the more he should have gotten! Even by this irrational logic, is he entitled to a 12% raise rather than the 4% the Union’s got?
3. Why is he, the Village Manager of Ridgewood, entitled to a greater salary than the Governor of the State of New Jersey, the Mayor of Newark or the Village Managers of Paramus and the other Bergen County Towns and Villages?
4. If the Deputy Mayor draws an analogy to the private sector (as he did when he supported incentive raises for management employees) can he justify giving the Chief Executive (our Village Manager) a raise when the Village is losing money? In the private sector, the Chief Executive of a losing business many times takes a substantial reduction, until the business begins to make money?
5. Shouldn’t more light be shone on the strange coincidence that last year Dr. Gabbert got an additional $20,000 as the CFO, (until a shift in internal positions was made, not a new hiring) and this year he got a raise of $20,000? This appears to indicate that there may have been promises made to him that were never disclosed to the public when he was hired?
6. All this aside. Even if Dr. Gabbert was the absolute best Village Manager ever to walk the Earth, he should be fired if the outragous remarks attributed to him are accurate. Greater men than he have been discharged for tasteless remarks that were less offensive than his! He is an insensitive (you fill in the blank)!
7. Finally, every person who is offended by what the Village Council did, has an obligation to attend the Village Council meetings and during the public comment portion, express their anger at the Council for this dastardly deed!
