Just Tellin’ It begins its 19th year with your columnist wearing his manager’s hat and reaching the conclusion that Mayor Greg Ballard’s a mediocre manager.
By his own admission, Ballard’s not a politician. Now we’re learning managing’s not his suit either.
Remember those warm and fuzzy TV ads last year that portrayed Ballard as a competent manager bringing “fiscal responsibility” to Indianapolis government?
Well, Job One of “fiscal responsibility” means setting a budget and keeping within its guidelines.
Instead, Ballard busted his budget giving his staff raises ranging in percentage terms from 6 percent to 31 percent and in actual terms from $5,000 to $22,000.
In today’s economy, employees – whether public or private sectors – earn “raises” based on the cost of living or on merit.
Managers develop budgets that factor in raises for employees. But just because an amount is set aside for raises doesn’t mean they’re automatically granted.
Today, in the most intelligent and progressive companies and governments, pay increases for employees are awarded on the basis of a formal evaluation and review process.
Sometimes, a company will grant a uniform percentage increase to all employees, as Indiana did with state employees.
Other companies/governments give raises based on merit. An employee meets or exceeds their goals, they’re compensated. Don’t meet goals; you get nothing extra in that proverbial pay envelope.
Last August, Mayor Ballard, or someone impersonating him, delivered his personal staff’s budget to the City-County Council for approval. That budget contained no salary increases.
The council approved the budget and the mayor, the actual one, signed the ordinance and it became effective Jan. 1, 2012.
Then right after the Super Bowl, Mayor Ballard, or the functionary who really runs the city, came up with the bright idea to hire an additional deputy mayor to handle education issues.
The already approved budgeted salary for deputy mayors was $97,850. But their leading candidate for education deputy mayor said he couldn‘t work for less than $120,000. Instead of being fiscally responsible, like he told Indianapolis in his TV ads, Mayor Ballard, or his body double, caved.
But that logical conclusion doesn’t explain the wholesale jacking up of compensation for everyone in the mayor’s office; except the mayor.
Some of these raises make no rational management sense. Take the mayor’s “veterans service officer.” Just 58,367 of Indianapolis’ 911,296 population (6.4 percent) are veterans. So, why do we need this position? What does he do? What justification is there for raising their salary $10,000 or 25 percent to $50,000?
My favorite unnecessary raise went to the mayor’s communications director. His 11 percent ($10,000) raise certainly wasn’t based on merit. Unless it was a reward for keeping the mayor away from the city’s Black media and other pesky media types in America’s 11th largest city like WXIN/Fox 59’s Russ McQuade and WRTV/Channel 6’s Kara Kenney.
So, the mayor’s minions get obscenely large pay hikes, many times higher than the cost of living, while virtually all other city/county workers haven’t seen a raise in years.
Adding insult to injury, the Ballard administration made loud noises last week that police officers and firefighters might be asked to give back their scheduled 3 percent raises for 2013. Raises that Mayor Ballard openly agreed to. Or was it that substitute mayor that seems to be running Indianapolis?
Yes, Mayor Ballard’s not a politician. And judging by his payroll debacle, he’s not a manager either.
At a time when Indianapolis desperately needs leadership, Indianapolis’ mayor still lacks the basic leadership skills needed to run a hamlet; much less a major American city.
Example: It was cowardly that neither Mayor Ballard nor our high priced education deputy mayor wouldn’t personally meet with parents of the now closed Project Charter School to hear their concerns and assure them that everything would be done to ease the transition.
Was the lack of a meeting because many of those parents were working class and working poor whites and Blacks? If those parents were well heeled developers or potential campaign funders, Ballard would’ve been there in a heartbeat.
And you wonder why Indianapolis continues to drift into the limbo of mediocrity!
What I’m hearing in the streets
When governments or others want to hide bad news from the media, they send it out late Friday afternoons, after the media’s left work for the weekend.
Last Friday afternoon at 5:19 p.m., I received an email addressed to “Media Partners” from Indiana Black Expo.
In the email, IBE’s PR spinmeisters said that their 2012 Summer Celebration was “incident free,” and added this little tidbit.
“While many festivals and annual events on this scale are suffering huge drops in attendance, IBE managed to remain stable (emphasis added).”
I’m grateful (I suppose) that Expo didn’t try to strain their already deteriorating credibility by trying to claim that attendance was up this year.
But Black Expo stubbornly refuses to acknowledge, what long time volunteers, sponsors, media and others who’ve personally attended Expo for years saw with their own eyes – that this year’s Expo attendance, especially activities inside the Convention Center, had markedly and substantially deteriorated.
I’ll repeat that Indiana Black Expo is about to experience it’s most severe crisis in its 42-year history. A crisis that if Expo’s head in the sand Board of Directors don’t straighten up and take action to right a slowly capsizing ship, we will see the destruction of this once proud, vital community resource.
The first key to IBE’s continued viability is the Circle City Classic, which occurs in less than eight weeks. Unlike past Classics, the buzz on this one is minimal. The two schools involved have small alumni followings; the fan bases are small; the teams don’t have the marquee and pizzazz value. If Expo doesn’t amp up the publicity and hype, like now, IBE could be facing as big an attendance debacle as Summer Celebration was.
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com
