Letter to the Editor: 'Manager's Raise Was Wrong'

The following letter was written by Ridgewood resident Daniel Johnson. 

While many people were away or at at least trying to go off the grid last month, four members of our council decided our village manager–who is a nice guy and a hard worker–is worth more to us than our governor.
 
Now I may, and often do, disagree with our governor, but I think he works a little harder than our village manager (and he doesn’t have a second job as mayor of Upper Saddle River as our manager does. But he does have a helicopter).

The village manager’s raise was wrong – wrong because these are really are tough times and we are cutting everywhere we can, and wrong because the village four didn't even have the common decency to allow public comments.  

Essentially these four council members said, ignore the taxpayers, we make the decisions and gave Gabbert a 12 percent raise from $165,000 to $185,000 after 14 months on the job. It was also backdated to last January.

With every village department trying to manage with budget cuts and the recent concessions made by the Fire Department, this raise was just plain wrong as well as an insult to taxpayers who made the mistake of voting for these people.

I too think Gabbert has done a good job. But DUH. That’s why we hired him. Why should he get a big reward for doing the job he was hired to do?

The Village four screwed up big time and they need to be called on it.

Gabbert should have gotten a really amazing letter of commendation. He should not have had his pay escalated to more than our governor’s and to very nearly what our president makes.

It was WRONG.