Ramapo: Top officials get personal employee agreements with raises, perks
RAMAPO – Aside from increasing their own pay up to $20,000 a year, Town Board members have taken care of five top department heads, approving employee agreements for them with hefty time off and buybacks beyond their base salaries topping $157,000.
The multiple-year agreements include the potential for more than 70 paid days off a year, including 33 vacation days, 10 personal days, 18 sick days and 12 holidays, as well as 168 hours of paid compensatory time.
Supervisor Michael Specht said Friday that the perks for the town’s top administrators are not that different from what contracted union employees get after working many years for the town.
He didn’t know the total value of the agreements, since they would depend on how employees uses their allotted time and perks.
“The senior management employee benefits are in line with some of the longtime CSEA employees and police agreements, for say, the captains,” Specht said. “These are senior people most of whom have been with the town for a long time. I thought the agreements were fair, reasonable.”
The five Town Board members approved employee agreements for the following administrators:
- Mona Montal, the supervisor’s chief of staff, purchasing director and budget coordinator, until Dec. 31, 2021, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2018. She signed her agreement in October.
- Christian Sampson, the appointed Town Clerk, until Dec. 31, 2019, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2018. Sampson signed the agreement in October.
- Linda Condon, the appointed personnel administrator, until Dec. 21, 2021. Condon signed her agreement Oct. 26, retroactive to Jan. 1.
- Scott Shedler, the appointed tax assessor and supervisor of facilities and risk management, until Dec. 31, 2021. Shedler signed the agreement Oct. 19, retroactive to Jan. 1.
- Yitzchock Ullman, the appointed receiver of taxes, until Dec. 31, 2019. Ullman signed the agreement in October, also retroactive to Jan. 1, 2018. Ullman is a former Town Board member appointed to the position in 2018.
The Journal News/lohud.com obtained copies of the employee agreements — which mostly provide the same benefits — from the Ramapo Town Clerk’s Office under the Freedom of Information Law. The town responded with the documents within five days, though it had 25 days to respond.
The agreements also allow for the five administrators to also accrue limited amounts of unused vacation days, such as 50 bankable days, and convert unused holiday pay into sick time. They can cash in time off and drive a town car for seven days a week, when they are on call for town business.
The agreements provide for CSEA-mirrored pay raises for each administrator, one 5 percent longevity raise during the life of the pact, and two extra vacation days per year during the agreement.
The employees also are allowed paid days off for personal reasons, including for religious observances and get five leave days for the death of an immediate family member.
‘Epitome of obfuscation’
Town activists were critical of the packages as excessive and unnecessary.
“The agreements are not necessary as the salaries already being paid were competitive and generous for the positions, therefore they are not at all in the interest of the Town of Ramapo as the Town does not benefit at all for having approved them,” Deborah Munitz said.
Munitz also criticized the Town Board members for approving the agreements without discussing the details publicly.
“The way in which the agreements were approved is the epitome of obfuscation and a lack of transparency,” she said in a statement. “No details were mentioned in the meeting of October 10th and when I submitted a FOIL requests for the agreements that should have already existed as of 10/10, I was told that as of 10/19 they didn’t exist.”
The Town Board adopted resolution concerning the agreements.
Specht said the hourly compensatory time comes into play when administrators work extra hours beyond 35 hours per week. He compared the hourly pay with the time-and-a-half union employees get for working overtime.
He said he’s not approving any administrator working on holidays when Town Hall is closed, outside of an emergency.
Specht and other elected officials don’t qualify for overtime and other perks.
“I can take off whenever I want,” Specht said, adding he’s taken one vacation day to take his daughter to a college and one sick day since being elected. ” I don’t get to cash in on days.”
RAMAPO: Updated budget gives elected officials raises up to $20K, higher tax hike
Adding to pay grades in the employee agreements, the five administrators got raises in the 2019 town budget approved by the Town Board members, who gave themselves raises of $17,000 and the supervisor a $20,000 bump for 2019.
William Weber, a certified public accountant and chief financial officer for a Suffern company, said the taxpayer-funded “compensation packages … would make some executives at Fortune 500 companies blush.”
“Employees of a town should be fairly compensated, but this can’t be construed as fair in any way, shape, or form,” said Weber, who lost the 2017 election for supervisor to Specht.
Weber noted Ramapo remains in “fiscally precarious situation,” saying winning an election doesn’t give the victors the right to do whatever they want.
Ramapo, he said, continuously breaks the mold.
“At a time when the medium family income in our town is $67,000 with most families just struggling to get by to pay their taxes by having dual household incomes or working two jobs, these types of compensation packages are not only unwarranted, but they are wholly unconscionable,” Weber said.
Raises amid deficit
The contracts continue a pattern of Ramapo officials providing raises and employee benefits for top officials.
Munitz said the “inclusion of a car, excessive vacation days, personal days and the overly generous method for converting unused days to cash are simply ways of hiding massive increases in salary that can’t be justified given the Town’s financial situation.”
After Specht didn’t include raises in his proposed $120 million budget for 2019, Town Board members gave the increases as Ramapo deals with an potential $8.5 million deficit.
The independent audits of town finances — promised for more than 18 months — from 2015 have yet to be completed, Specht and Montal have said.
The spending plan also increased town property taxes and creates two jobs costing $180,000 for a litter patrol.
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LOSTMESSIAH 
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