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DUNKIRK – Dunkirk Mayor Kate Wdowiasz defended a $15,000 pay raise for Clerk/Treasurer Amy Dobek after city resident Albert Dawson demanded its cancellation.
"When the elected treasurer position was eliminated, the city clerk salary jumped 37.5%, from $40,000 to $55,000, with total compensation even higher," Dawson said at a Common Council meeting. "That's a $15,000 raise while Dunkirk taxpayers are absorbing an 84% property tax hike. We were promised that department consolidation would save money. Instead, savings are immediately followed by a pay bump. The justification given was absorbing treasurer duties. But let's look at reality."
Dawson listed duties among several city financial departments.
"The clerk's office has five staff members and the remaining treasurer duties in that office are strictly transactional -- running a cash counter for water bills and taxes."
Then Dawson referenced a proposal to make the zoning and building department handle licensing of tradespeople. Council postponed a vote on it, because according to Natalie Luczkowiak, councilwoman and meeting chairperson, it cannot ratify a law until at least seven days after a public hearing. The hearing for the change was held earlier in the meeting; several building and zoning employees criticized the plan.
"While taking that $15,000 raise under the guise of absorbing duties, the clerk’s office is actively seeking to offload longstanding historic responsibilities -- trade licenses being shipped away to other departments," Dawson said. "Consider the precedent the council is setting. Absorbing duties automatically justifies a pay bump – what happens when another department is forced to take over licensing responsibility? Does that department (head) get a $15,000 raise too?"
Dawson also criticized the recent reduction of public hours in the Clerk/Treasurer's Office, which the city has blamed on staffing issues. He concluded that council should roll back Dobek's pay hike.
Wdowiasz responded to Dawson.
"I think there is some confusion in exactly what job duties were absorbed when the clerk became clerk/treasurer," she said. "That also includes generating water bills, generating tax bills, making sure all of that stuff is out -- it's not simply collecting money. There is a lot of work that goes into it, and we just recently staffed that office to their fullest staffing amount. The money that was given to Ms. Dobek as a pay increase came from the treasurer’s salary that we were saving. It is, in my own humble opinion, not nearly enough for the extra amount of work that she’s done."
The mayor later concluded, "We are in the process of expanding our (Clerk/Treasurer's Office) hours now that we are fully staffed, and we are hoping that as soon as we have at least one more person fully trained, we will open for regular business hours."