Friday, August 6, 2010

Oakland City Employee Defends $165,500 Salaries for City Managers

An Oakland City employee posted in support of Brooke Levin, Assistant Public Works Director, complaining that the We Fight Blight article describing problems with the tree services program was unfair to Ms. Levin. The employee also strongly supported Ms. Levin's $165,500 salary, which keep in mind is only $10,000 less than the Governor of California. The email, which appears to be from a high level employee at the City, reflects just how out of touch Oakland City staff and managers are when it comes to bloated employee salaries, customer service, and accountability, particularly with the City facing an unprecedented financial crisis and laying off 80 police.

According to City records, Brooke Levin has been working with, and for, the Public Works Department for the past 19 years. Ms. Levin started with the City of Oakland in 1991 as an aide to Mayor Elihu Harris, focusing on Public Works and Planning issues. From 1994 until 2004, she was the Public Work's Environmental Services Manager, overseeing the city's watershed, environmental compliance, recycling, solid waste, and sustainability program. In March of 2004, Ms. Levin was appointed as the Interim Assistant Public Works Director, with responsibility for the maintenance of streets and sidewalks, and the city's buildings and vehicle fleet Ms. Levin is now the Assistant Public Works Director and oversees the tree services program, among other responsibilities. She has also served as the Acting Public Works Director in the absence of the current Director. Ms. Levin has a base salary of $165,500 per year and has a retirement benefit of 2.7% at 55. This means Ms. Levin could retire at 55 and, assuming 20 years of service at the City of Oakland, would be entitled to a retirement of $89,370 per year for the remainder of her life.

The post from the city employee is in reference to the We Fight Blight Post, City of Oakland: Mismanaged, Incompetent and Unfit to Serve Residents?

Dear Editor: I think this article is very unfair to Ms. Levin. I am neither a friend of nor an employee of Ms. Levin. I do, however, know of her work ethic, her dedication and the high standards to which she holds herself and her staff.


Brooke Levin, Deputy Public Works Director
Your reader speaks of Ms. Levin's incompetence with the Tree Services Division. However, your reader was remiss in not noting that Ms. Levin assumed responsibility for the Tree Division just 2 months ago. I don't know about you, but it seems a little unreasonable to expect an executive level manager to know the in's and out's of a new division in that short period of time. Furthermore, a reasonable individual would not expect a senior manager like Ms. Levin to be personally apprised of the status of every tree in Oakland. That's what databases and first line staff should know. To direct such micro-level questions to an assistant director is synonymous with asking the CFO of a mid-sized company whether he knew what the Company paid on their last phone bill!

As I said before, I am neither a friend nor a foe of Ms. Levin. All I know from regular observation is: MS. BROOKE LEVIN IS ONE OF THE MOST DEDICATED, TALENTED, HARD WORKING, CITY EMPLOYEE WE'VE GOT and the City is lucky to have her. As for her pay, how would you compensate an employee who runs a 300-person organization (approx.) but still responds to emails and phone calls at 2 or 3am in the morning? Does your reader work that tirelessly at his job?

Look, the bottom line is this: as public servants, we are tasked to assist a constituent courteously regardless of his/her attitude, viewpoints, or agenda. Most people recognize we are people too and therefore, are by no means perfect. They appreciate us when we do the best we can. A very small minority (perhaps your reader?) will choose to attack with criticism and insults and will not be appeased no matter what we do. By writing this, I hope those who read this article will see that this most public attack on Ms. Levin is misguided. ~ Anonymous City Employee
 
We think this city employee is sadly misguided and woefully out of touch with reality. First of all, Ms. Levin has been working with, and for, the Public Works Department for 19 years and has managed the streets and sidewalks in the City for the last six years. She has had plenty of opportunity to become familiar with the requirements for street trees. Street trees affect sidewalks, right?. In Oakland, haven't you ever walked down the buckled and crumbling liability we call sidewalks. Many are in this condition due to inappropriate trees planted by the City of Oakland.

For Ms. Levin to have little to no understanding of the tree services program within Public Works after working with and in the Department for 19 years says a lot about the lack of coordination among managers within Public Works and the lack of initiative on Ms. Levin's part to understand how other programs in the Department function. Now that Ms. Levin is responsible for street trees, and there have been significant questions raised by the public over the mismanagement of the street trees program, one would think Ms. Levin would have at least read and understood the city's tree ordinances and reviewed the status of the program with relevant city staff before meeting with our reader. Isn't that a legitimate managerial responsibility?

Ms. Brooke and Ms. Lin, the Deputy City Administrator, who both met with our reader have yet to answer the most basic of his questions: who owns the trees the City was cutting down? This is fundamental as it governs the public process required by City law to remove the trees? As well, the City Arborist brought to the meeting by Ms. Levin could not answer the question. When directly asked by our reader who owned the public right of way that contained the sidewalk, the tree well and the tree, Ms. Levin could not answer the question and did not offer to find the answer for our reader. This is the response the public gets, after Ms. Levin has managed the streets and sidewalks in Oakland for over six years (we won't even get into her responsibility for a repaving cycle of 85 years and third world conditions of our roads and sidewalks).

We agree with the city employee that Ms. Levin is not expected to know the status of every single tree in the City, but that is not what our reader was asking. We do, however, expect her to be an expert in her area of management, and we expect her to be responsive to the public (which includes our reader). This means figuring out the answers to legitimate questions posed by residents and finding out the legal status of the two trees in context of the tree ordinances before meeting with our reader. So we invite either Ms. Levin or Ms. Lin to answer the question.

Regarding Ms. Levin's salary, the Executive Director for Caltrans, Cindy McKim, has responsibility for maintenance and operation of 50,000  lane miles throughout the state, a budget of more than $13.8 billion and responsibility for 22,000 employees, and is actually paid less than Ms. Levin due to state budget furloughs. Additionally, the Executive Director for Caltrans has a retirement benefit of 2% at 55. Assuming 20 years of service with the state, McKim would get a retirement benefit of only $66,000 compared to Ms. Levin's $89,370. So how is it that Ms. Levin's salary is appropriate for her level of responsibility when other public officials with far more responsibility are paid less? You can see state worker salaries at the Sac Bee.

Residents in the city are tired of paying for bloated city salaries, especially at the expense of public safety, and especially when there is poor customer service from city executives who do not understand the laws and programs they are responsible for implementing, when their management and oversight of staff and department functions is questionable, and who get upset when held accountable by knowledgeable members of the public. We are sure it is uncomfortable for some city employees to have the spotlight shined on city operations and when they are held publicly accountable for their performance. However, since the City of Oakland has been so poorly managed and the customer service lacking in many respects, contributing to crumbling infrastructure and the City's current financial crisis, perhaps what is needed to ensure the public gets what it pays for is to hold its managers and executives publicly accountable.

What will be telling is how, when and whether Ms. Levin and Ms. Lin actually addresses the concerns of our reader. To date, they have both failed to answer the most basic question: Who owns the trees? To date they have failed to ensure that when trees are cut down the City follows local, state and federal laws. To date, they have failed to substantively address the issues raised by our reader. Perhaps our anonymous city employee who so eagerly defended Ms. Levin and her $165,500 salary can tell us.  We are only talking about two trees here. This cannot be so difficult for Ms. Levin and Ms. Lin, who collectively make $285,000, or can it?

Perhaps with a new Mayor and City Administrator there will be some significant housecleaning and an emphasis on transparency, quality customer service, and knowledgeable and responsive management.

5 comments:

len said...

Regardless how this particular manager's performance compares to that of other Oakland city government managers, her department's overall management was severely criticized in the 570 page detailed report the city auditor's office commissioned an outside consulting firm to prepare in 2009.

(http://www.oaklandauditor.com/images/oakland/pwa_perf_audit4.09.pdf)

Skip to pages 15, 25, and 26. Skip to page 435 to DPW's response in which it agrees with most of the work flow and mechanical recommendations, and the formalistic management ones (eg revise the DPW's mission statement)

But DPW basically blows off the other management recommenations with a combo of not needed or we don't have the money.

the report gently points out that DPW doesn't try real hard to get the best price from vendors and contractors.

It also discusses the use of the sanitary sewer fund. I'll have to reread a few times to figure if it's saying the fund just isn't big enough, or DPW "borrowed from it" to cover other expenditures.

By the way, DPW only gets about 2% of its funding from the General Fund. This is much lower pct than many other cities provide. On the other hand, hasn't it been like that for years?

No matter, if compensation costs were greatly reduced in the DPW there would be much more money avail for them to do maintain the City properly.


If voters support a possible charter amendment to allow the City to outsource all non safety services, there could be as much as a 40 percent reduction in the DWP personell costs. That's a whole bunch of potholes, sewers, sidewalks, and trees etc.

-len raphael
temescal

Unknown said...

As an Oakland home owner; i.e. property tax payer, I am getting more and more frustrated by the lack of leadership and lack of accountability in our city as exemplified by this post. If the DPW Director could point to improvements made to the DPW in Oakland under her watch I would not be as angry about her salary and benefits. But that never seems to happen in these discussions with Oakland public employees or with Oakland public employee unions. Instead we are told they deserve everything they get just "because."
In the private sector, where I work, I am judged every day by the quality, efficiency and profitability of the work I produce. Before I vote in favor of any additional fees or taxes I want to see this level of accountability for public sector employees. I think it is a "no win" argument we keep having on the various Oakland blogs about employee compensation because once you start attacking employee's salary/benefits they get defensive and the discussion stops. What we SHOULD be discussing is what is the quality of work we are getting for our money? I don't begrudge a person for being well-paid IF they are doing a phenomenal job. But as residents and tax-payers we don't have the data to even start this kind of discussion. If the public employee's unions would offer or accept work rule changes that would make their various departments run more efficiently I would start to change my mind. But that hasn't happened yet. So I will be voting no on all tax/fee measures on this fall's ballot.

Ken O said...

Urban Releaf, an Oakland-based nonprofit, can help with tree maintenance and planting if needed, and has no worker pensions.

To be fair to the DPW Tree Arborist, I heard that the tree management over there has been up in the air since Dan Gallagher left (retired?) this year or last.

The cost of living in Sacramento is probably lower than Oakland's, and the hills, where many Oakland executive level city management might live, is higher than the flats. Oakland seems to have a cost of living (monthly rents) just a smidge under San Francisco's.


Johnny G: "authority" at all levels in our formerly fine nation can be called "grifters."

Unknown said...

I think what's missing from this conversation is who amongst us would say no to a generous compensation package that was negotiated by others and awarded to you?

I know, first hand that Brooke Levin, regardless of her pay would behave ethically and work extremely hard whenever she is called, at whatever hour, or for whatever reason.

She works on behalf of a city and a job that she truly loves. I only wish we knew more about the extremely caring competent people out there working on our behalf!

If we did, maybe we would feel better about rewarding them for their efforts, as opposed to vilifying them for their pay packages.

Fight Blight said...

Thanks Gary,

We appreciate your comments. However, do you wonder why Ms. Levin and Ms. Lin have failed to address the fundamental questions raised by our reader and respond in writing to him? While we appreciate that someone is both ethical and hardworking, we also appreciate transparency, responsiveness and results. Unfortunately, we are seeing very little of that with city employees including high paid executives and managers. Ms. Brooks and Ms. Lin have failed to simply identify who owns the trees in question. The answer to that simple question drives the entire public process for public noticing and removal of the trees. Why Ms. Brooks and Ms. Lin fail to understand that and continue to not provide the answer to that question remains a mystery. It appears they wish for this issue to just disappear...