I don't think there was necessarily a message in deferring the sheriff's raise until this year. What I read somewhere is he was told the others would be approved and his would be deferred until after the salaries were negotiated for other workers. And an occasional salary adjustment, beyond the usual COLA does not put me off. The analysis should be really, what would it cost us to hire the talent we need, not so much is he making more than other people around here. I don't know what is competitive for that job, but that should be the yardstick. What does bother me is a charge of nepotism; I think he hired a family member
The nepotism policy was amended a few years ago partly because the sheriff's office, among other departments, have a staffing problem. The overtime is blowing a hole in the sheriff's budget. The County Health Dept. was able to hire two staffers recently. No one applied to that dept. in two years. I watched the most recent County meeting on YouTube. Adm. John Taflan explained that his research of supervisor salaries of 11 other counties in NY revealed that WC was in the bottom third of the 11 counties for salaries. The proposed salary adjustment, if approved, would put WC supervisor salaries in the middle third. The public may not be aware that along with the supervisor's salary comes the option of a very comprehensive health ins. plan. The employee pays a very reasonable premium towards the cost of the insurance. The supervisor position is considered part time yet some on the board have enrolled their entire family in the County's insurance plan for a very reasonable monthly premium. Comprehensive health insurance is quite a perk for what has been determined to be a part time job. Give the supervisor's the suggested pay raise and eliminate the health insurance option?
I manage health costs at my place by having a generous subsidy for the workers and a much smaller additional subsidy if they add spouses , dependents. Since dependent coverage is cheap, it works out that we can still offer decent insurance, maybe at lower tier, for employee and dependents, while discouraging spouses from using our insurance instead of their own employer's. But health insurance and retirement contributions are big expenses and should be included in the numbers when talking about compensation packages, not just base pay. It would be good to know the total compensation for these folks.
Well, I just spent months trying to explain our system of government to the people of Queensbury and I guess I did a terrible job, so I deserved to lose.
On the Warren County Board of Supervisors outside of committee there is not a 9-8 vote. We have a system of weighted voting that in theory provides for Constitutionally guaranteed one person-one vote representation. I don’t believe the Supervisor system we have does that but let me try to explain how it supposedly works.
In Warren County we have 20 supervisors on the BOS. 11 of them are town supervisors, top executive in their town for which they get paid some amount of money, but they also get a second job as county supervisor.
The other 9 are the 5 Glens Falls supervisors elected by Ward, and the 4 Queensbury county supervisors elected at-large, or town wide. These 9 are the only supervisors directly elected to county positions and they only get 1 paycheck - from the county.
Because Queensbury holds 44.5% of county population, GF has 22.5%, and the other 10 towns together account for 33% of population each supervisors is assigned a weighted vote.
Imagine it like a soccer game where each supervisor gets one free kick at the goal. But the value of each goal is different depending on which town the player represents. The total number of points possible is 1000, so to win the “team” needs to score 501 points. A player from Queensbury gets 89 points per kick, GF gets 45, and on down to Hague that gets 10.
So a “close” game can be 13 players on one side vs 7 players from the other side: 5 Qby + 1 GF + Stony Creek would beat the other 13 together.
The problem is that in committee there is no weighted vote and the committees design the goal posts. It’s a convoluted system that very few people really understand, and in my opinion if people do not understand their system of government it is a bad system that needs to be changed.
The other kind of weird things is that we elect supervisors to run their towns. In some of the small towns the supervisor position may be a a part time job, and I have no idea what the pay rate is, but in Queensbury the supervisor is a full time job, I doubt any reasonable person would disagree. So why are does our form of government make a person with a full time job in government work a second job, admittedly a part time job, as a county supervisor?
Can anyone imagine that working in some other office? Would we expect the Governor to work a second job?
Mike, I don’t see where you define the problem with the weighted voting system nor do I see where you offer a solution.
You use the word “supposedly” in you explanation of how the system how it works? So, are you saying the it does not work the way you explained it? If so, then how does it really work?
You say “the problem is that in committee there is no weighted vote and the committees design the goal posts.” So, should the committees also be a weighted vote?
You then say “if people do not understand their system of government, it is a bad system that needs to be changed.” If someone does not understand the old system, how would they know if the new system was an improvement?
W, you appear confused about my contention and seem mystified that I would give no explanation, yet in the next sentence you quote me “the problem is…”
And no, I’m not saying there should be a weighted vote in the committees. I’m saying it is a bad system and should be replaced entirely.
In answer to your final question, I propose we switch to a county legislature in which legislators are elected in districts with reasonably equal population. That does away with the inequitability entirely.
Supervisors do not like that idea. Maybe because it takes a paycheck away from them and the ability to access the county health insurance system.
No Mike not mystified you failed to answer the questions.
The only question you answered was the last one.
In your system how many legislators will there be? What will determine the boundaries for the districts? When you say “reasonably equal population” can you quantify reasonably equal?
Anybody who has watched the performance of the Warren County Supervisors in the past 2 years should be disgusted with the way they have been spending tax dollars (including bed tax which some of them say is out of town people paying so not the same). And the raises are an absolute joke but so are the many incumbent and corrupt supervisors. It's time to go to a County Legislature model so the little fiefdoms of the County no longer are the tail wagging the dog. Oh well, until the voters wake up and vote the losers out, it will be deja vu all over again.
Although I’ve heard there are just as many complaints with county legislature system. Sometimes, it is not the system, it’s just the quality of officials in office.
I would agree that often plays a big role, but I also think that it would be less likely to have "little league talent" as Supervisors winning in so many smaller townships and voting for questionable things if we had one County Manager. One thing for certain, this model consistently fails to reform itself, and it never will. One need only look at the hiring of the Tourism Direct 2 years ago and how certain Supervisors corrupted the process to get "their chosen candidate" who turned around and bit them in the ass when he exposed their BS and incompetence and questionable spending. Oh well.
While no system is perfect the supervisor system is set up with internal conflict - people being paid by 2 entities to make decisions that are often in conflict. The very decision on whether to switch to a legislature sets up a conflict in that the supervisors who just voted to give themselves a pay raise would be expected to give up that extra paycheck entirely. Is it surprising they think switching is a bad idea and refuse to consider it as an option?
I love that you compared the percentage of raises of administrators to average workers and that you were conscious of it when you were a manager at the PS. Only two board members tried to reduce, by a wide margin, those very ample raises and the rest feasted themselves on filet mignon for next year's budget. I really wish they had the decency to allow the breakdown of who voted yea or nay to be made public. That definitely could have influenced the community's votes.
The supervisors who opposed the 30% increase were supervisors Braymer, Diamond, Driscoll, McDevitt and Bruno from GF; Strough, Magowan, Etu of Qby; Leggett of Chestertown.
Supervisors who voted to give themselves a 30% raise were Chair Geraghty of Wbg, Thomas of Stony Creek, Conover of Bolton, Runyon of Thurman, Smith of Johnsburg, Geraci of Horicon, Merlino of Luzerne, and Wild of Qby.
Supervisors Frazier, Beaty, and Dickinson did not vote - I assume they were absent.
Wow! Thank you, Mr. Parwana. This is valuable information that many will appreciate now and at the next local election. I'm sorry you lost this time. Don't give up.
This vote is a great illustration of why we need a county legislature, like most other counties in the state. The current system lacks accountability for supervisors who double as town CEOs.
Upcounty supervisors are both executives (head of their town) and legislators (county BOS members). But when people vote for or against them, they in practice vote entirely based on their record as an executive. People may be pissed about them giving themselves a huge raise but supervisor campaigns are run on town issues, not county issues.
It is entirely possible that a person can be a good executive and a bad legislator but there is no way under the current system to separate the tasks for upcounty towns. A legislature system does this.
It is clear to me that upcounty supervisors like double dipping. Not only being able to give themselves huge raises with no real backlash but also being able to have big influence both in their own town and at the county level. It's no coincidence that the good ol boy network in the county is mostly upcounty supervisors (who do the double dipping) and the common sense mostly comes from GF and Qby supervisors who are pure legislators.
It's no coincidence that in the last several decades, nearly all the time has been spent with BOS chairs from upcounty towns. Only one year with Seeber and a few with Stec. And none from Glens Falls in my living memory. GF and Qby represent half the seats on the board.
Regarding your piece on "People you missed" at the Post Star... I believe that the 40 + year employee in the Obituary Dept. that you named as "Barb Green" is actually our wonderful next door neighbor Barb Adams. I'm told that Barb was actually at the paper for 49 years and we would love for her to get proper credit for that achievement. Thanks.
I don't think there was necessarily a message in deferring the sheriff's raise until this year. What I read somewhere is he was told the others would be approved and his would be deferred until after the salaries were negotiated for other workers. And an occasional salary adjustment, beyond the usual COLA does not put me off. The analysis should be really, what would it cost us to hire the talent we need, not so much is he making more than other people around here. I don't know what is competitive for that job, but that should be the yardstick. What does bother me is a charge of nepotism; I think he hired a family member
He hired his son.
That is really bad.
The nepotism policy was amended a few years ago partly because the sheriff's office, among other departments, have a staffing problem. The overtime is blowing a hole in the sheriff's budget. The County Health Dept. was able to hire two staffers recently. No one applied to that dept. in two years. I watched the most recent County meeting on YouTube. Adm. John Taflan explained that his research of supervisor salaries of 11 other counties in NY revealed that WC was in the bottom third of the 11 counties for salaries. The proposed salary adjustment, if approved, would put WC supervisor salaries in the middle third. The public may not be aware that along with the supervisor's salary comes the option of a very comprehensive health ins. plan. The employee pays a very reasonable premium towards the cost of the insurance. The supervisor position is considered part time yet some on the board have enrolled their entire family in the County's insurance plan for a very reasonable monthly premium. Comprehensive health insurance is quite a perk for what has been determined to be a part time job. Give the supervisor's the suggested pay raise and eliminate the health insurance option?
I manage health costs at my place by having a generous subsidy for the workers and a much smaller additional subsidy if they add spouses , dependents. Since dependent coverage is cheap, it works out that we can still offer decent insurance, maybe at lower tier, for employee and dependents, while discouraging spouses from using our insurance instead of their own employer's. But health insurance and retirement contributions are big expenses and should be included in the numbers when talking about compensation packages, not just base pay. It would be good to know the total compensation for these folks.
Well, I just spent months trying to explain our system of government to the people of Queensbury and I guess I did a terrible job, so I deserved to lose.
On the Warren County Board of Supervisors outside of committee there is not a 9-8 vote. We have a system of weighted voting that in theory provides for Constitutionally guaranteed one person-one vote representation. I don’t believe the Supervisor system we have does that but let me try to explain how it supposedly works.
In Warren County we have 20 supervisors on the BOS. 11 of them are town supervisors, top executive in their town for which they get paid some amount of money, but they also get a second job as county supervisor.
The other 9 are the 5 Glens Falls supervisors elected by Ward, and the 4 Queensbury county supervisors elected at-large, or town wide. These 9 are the only supervisors directly elected to county positions and they only get 1 paycheck - from the county.
Because Queensbury holds 44.5% of county population, GF has 22.5%, and the other 10 towns together account for 33% of population each supervisors is assigned a weighted vote.
Imagine it like a soccer game where each supervisor gets one free kick at the goal. But the value of each goal is different depending on which town the player represents. The total number of points possible is 1000, so to win the “team” needs to score 501 points. A player from Queensbury gets 89 points per kick, GF gets 45, and on down to Hague that gets 10.
So a “close” game can be 13 players on one side vs 7 players from the other side: 5 Qby + 1 GF + Stony Creek would beat the other 13 together.
The problem is that in committee there is no weighted vote and the committees design the goal posts. It’s a convoluted system that very few people really understand, and in my opinion if people do not understand their system of government it is a bad system that needs to be changed.
The other kind of weird things is that we elect supervisors to run their towns. In some of the small towns the supervisor position may be a a part time job, and I have no idea what the pay rate is, but in Queensbury the supervisor is a full time job, I doubt any reasonable person would disagree. So why are does our form of government make a person with a full time job in government work a second job, admittedly a part time job, as a county supervisor?
Can anyone imagine that working in some other office? Would we expect the Governor to work a second job?
Mike has explained this quite well.
Great article. I’m so sorry you lost.
See my comment above. You've nailed a big part of the problem.
Mike, I don’t see where you define the problem with the weighted voting system nor do I see where you offer a solution.
You use the word “supposedly” in you explanation of how the system how it works? So, are you saying the it does not work the way you explained it? If so, then how does it really work?
You say “the problem is that in committee there is no weighted vote and the committees design the goal posts.” So, should the committees also be a weighted vote?
You then say “if people do not understand their system of government, it is a bad system that needs to be changed.” If someone does not understand the old system, how would they know if the new system was an improvement?
So, what system of government do you propose?
W, you appear confused about my contention and seem mystified that I would give no explanation, yet in the next sentence you quote me “the problem is…”
And no, I’m not saying there should be a weighted vote in the committees. I’m saying it is a bad system and should be replaced entirely.
In answer to your final question, I propose we switch to a county legislature in which legislators are elected in districts with reasonably equal population. That does away with the inequitability entirely.
Supervisors do not like that idea. Maybe because it takes a paycheck away from them and the ability to access the county health insurance system.
No Mike not mystified you failed to answer the questions.
The only question you answered was the last one.
In your system how many legislators will there be? What will determine the boundaries for the districts? When you say “reasonably equal population” can you quantify reasonably equal?
Anybody who has watched the performance of the Warren County Supervisors in the past 2 years should be disgusted with the way they have been spending tax dollars (including bed tax which some of them say is out of town people paying so not the same). And the raises are an absolute joke but so are the many incumbent and corrupt supervisors. It's time to go to a County Legislature model so the little fiefdoms of the County no longer are the tail wagging the dog. Oh well, until the voters wake up and vote the losers out, it will be deja vu all over again.
Although I’ve heard there are just as many complaints with county legislature system. Sometimes, it is not the system, it’s just the quality of officials in office.
I would agree that often plays a big role, but I also think that it would be less likely to have "little league talent" as Supervisors winning in so many smaller townships and voting for questionable things if we had one County Manager. One thing for certain, this model consistently fails to reform itself, and it never will. One need only look at the hiring of the Tourism Direct 2 years ago and how certain Supervisors corrupted the process to get "their chosen candidate" who turned around and bit them in the ass when he exposed their BS and incompetence and questionable spending. Oh well.
While no system is perfect the supervisor system is set up with internal conflict - people being paid by 2 entities to make decisions that are often in conflict. The very decision on whether to switch to a legislature sets up a conflict in that the supervisors who just voted to give themselves a pay raise would be expected to give up that extra paycheck entirely. Is it surprising they think switching is a bad idea and refuse to consider it as an option?
I love that you compared the percentage of raises of administrators to average workers and that you were conscious of it when you were a manager at the PS. Only two board members tried to reduce, by a wide margin, those very ample raises and the rest feasted themselves on filet mignon for next year's budget. I really wish they had the decency to allow the breakdown of who voted yea or nay to be made public. That definitely could have influenced the community's votes.
The supervisors who opposed the 30% increase were supervisors Braymer, Diamond, Driscoll, McDevitt and Bruno from GF; Strough, Magowan, Etu of Qby; Leggett of Chestertown.
Supervisors who voted to give themselves a 30% raise were Chair Geraghty of Wbg, Thomas of Stony Creek, Conover of Bolton, Runyon of Thurman, Smith of Johnsburg, Geraci of Horicon, Merlino of Luzerne, and Wild of Qby.
Supervisors Frazier, Beaty, and Dickinson did not vote - I assume they were absent.
Wow! Thank you, Mr. Parwana. This is valuable information that many will appreciate now and at the next local election. I'm sorry you lost this time. Don't give up.
Thanks for that information Mike. Wish it had been reported in newspaper.
I agree. I think there should be more transparency there.
This vote is a great illustration of why we need a county legislature, like most other counties in the state. The current system lacks accountability for supervisors who double as town CEOs.
Upcounty supervisors are both executives (head of their town) and legislators (county BOS members). But when people vote for or against them, they in practice vote entirely based on their record as an executive. People may be pissed about them giving themselves a huge raise but supervisor campaigns are run on town issues, not county issues.
It is entirely possible that a person can be a good executive and a bad legislator but there is no way under the current system to separate the tasks for upcounty towns. A legislature system does this.
It is clear to me that upcounty supervisors like double dipping. Not only being able to give themselves huge raises with no real backlash but also being able to have big influence both in their own town and at the county level. It's no coincidence that the good ol boy network in the county is mostly upcounty supervisors (who do the double dipping) and the common sense mostly comes from GF and Qby supervisors who are pure legislators.
It's no coincidence that in the last several decades, nearly all the time has been spent with BOS chairs from upcounty towns. Only one year with Seeber and a few with Stec. And none from Glens Falls in my living memory. GF and Qby represent half the seats on the board.
Regarding your piece on "People you missed" at the Post Star... I believe that the 40 + year employee in the Obituary Dept. that you named as "Barb Green" is actually our wonderful next door neighbor Barb Adams. I'm told that Barb was actually at the paper for 49 years and we would love for her to get proper credit for that achievement. Thanks.
You are absolutely right it is Barb Adams.