If you’re a top-ranked bureaucrat employed by one of our local governmental units, you are pulling down a six-figure salary and benefits such as a taxpayer-guaranteed pension that’s more than double – and sometimes even triple – what their private-sector courterparts will get from Social Security.
But when it comes time for our elected officials to evaluate the performance of these bureaucrats and dole out raises, the folks we elect to keep a keen eye on our local governmental units for us usually run into closed session and hide their deliberations from taxpayer view. Often those elected officials rationalize the secrecy by claiming that’s the only way they can have “candid” discussions – which causes us to wonder how much less than “candid” are all the discussions they actually have in open session?
Make no mistake about it, however: those closed-session evaluations are far less about candor than about avoiding transparency and accountability to the taxpayers who foot the bills.
So a Watchdog bark-out goes out today to the Park Ridge Park District Board for its current evaluation process of executive director Gayle Mountcastle.
For the first time in Park District history as we know it, the Park Board is conducting what appears to be the closest thing to an “open” evaluation process conducted by any local governing body – with the possible exception of the time the Park Ridge City Council openly discussed then-city manager Jim Hock’s failure to meet a number of performance criteria the Council had set for him near the end of his tenure.
At its March 6th meeting, the Park Board held the majority of Mountcastle’s review in open session (running from approx. 1:50:20 through 2:12:43, and then from approx. 2:19:20 through 3:15:49 of the Board’s meeting video. Since then, it has produced for public viewing a Performance Review of that evaluation and salary recommendation that will be discussed and voted on at tonight’s Board meeting; and Mountcastle prepared her own evaluation of her goals and achievements that is also part of the packet for tonight’s meeting (7:30 p.m., 2701 W. Sibley Street) available for public inspection.
We put little-to-no stock in consultants’ studies like the one the Board commissioned from McGladrey to design a “market-based” compensation program for the District’s full-time staff. Such studies are inherently flawed because: (a) they are not based on the specific value of a specific employee to this specific district but, instead, are based on what other districts pay their employees – for whatever reasons, based on whatever resources those other districts may have that our Park District doesn’t, etc.; and (b) they seem to assume an unrealistic level of mobility of these employees.
When it comes to government in Illinois, what “somebody else” is doing usually is no better, and often worse, than what your own governmental unit is doing. And it’s usually irrelevant, given the substantial dissimilarities between and among allegedly “comparable” communities, park districts and school districts that consultants conveniently tend to ignore.
So adding a 3.0 % raise to Mountcastle’s current $143,225 salary in response to what appears to be a C+/B- evaluation (3.75 out of 5.0) seems both arbitrary and overly-generous, especially because the Performance Review clearly doesn’t capture the kind of specifics the taxpayers deserve about how their elected representatives actually came up with that 3.75 rating and a corresponding 3.0% raise – specifics we assume were hidden away in the closed-session portion of the March 6 meeting, or a prior one, in the interest of “candid” discussions.
But we’re not going to let a desire for “great” become the enemy of the “good” that this Park Board has achieved – under the leadership of president Rick Biagi – when it comes to shifting the paradigm from secrecy to transparency in the evaluation of the District’s equivalent of a corporation’s CEO.
And this evaluation process should serve notice on the City Council and the Boards of D-64 and D-207 that this level of transparency and accountability – and even more of it – can be achieved if our elected representatives on those bodies start showing a bit more concern for the taxpayers who pay these salaries than for the employees who pocket them.
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8 comments so far
Applause for the Park Board, even if they should have done the entire review in open session. And PW is right, saying they can’t talk candidly in open session is ridiculous.
This isn’t ideal, but it is a big step in the right direction.
If she gets a 3% raise for doing an average job, wonder what she would have gotten for doing an above average job. Seems to me that if she’s doing an average job, no raise is warranted, she’s doing what she’s being paid for. While the Park Board may get “applause” for being somewhat open in their process, that doesn’t mean they got the end result right.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course they didn’t get the end result right! But if not for the transparency, we couldn’t even have this discussion about whether her 3.75 job rating justified a 3% raise.
They’ve got to crawl before they can walk.
But didn’t they go into closed session to “finish” the review??? What happened there one has to wonder?
Was this a case of one step forward; five steps back??
EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course one has to wonder about ANYTHING done in closed session. But, no, this is nothing remotely close to ANY “steps back.”
One Commissioner can drag an entire review down for political reasons, for personal reasons, for whatever reason they choose.
So if six Commissioners give the Director a score of 4.4 and one Commissioner gives the a 0, the average is 3.75.
You have to know the details in order to judge the score.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Which is yet another reason why NO part of the evaluation process should be conducted in closed session, because it can conceal the results – however favorable or unfavorable it may be due to 1 or 2 raters giving “0”s or “5”s.
The concept of “Meets Expectations” sounds like an “average” performance to most people but is actually meant to be better than that. When the expectations are as low as they were under the second-to-last director before Gayle or as high as they became under Ochromowicz, “meeting” those expectations means something very different in terms of what was accomplished. While perhaps not as charismatic and gifted as Mr. O. was, Ms. Mountcastle is well above the “C” level and on top of Mt. Rainier compared to Lange’s level. Cleanliness, convenience and customer service levels in particular are far better than they were before Ray O. came in and changed the culture pretty much overnight. Ms. Mountcastle has sustained those gains and in fact, has made them SOP. That “meets” my expectations, bigtime!
EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ll reserve judgment on Ms. Mountcastle’s deification until the bills for all the bonded debt she promoted start coming due, and how those affect the day-to-day operations of the District. We well remember how, back in the 1990s, servicing the non-referendum bonded debt from the Community Center sucked up the money that had been used to keep up other facilities and the parks, causing neglect and disrepair.
When it comes to government stupidity and profligacy, history tends to have a way of repeating itself.
Utter and unmitigated hogwash. I cannot believe you are actually blaming the Community Center facility build-out for the reason why the rest of the Park District (and the Community Center itself) were allowed to go to hell in a handcart.
Stink does not require tons of money to fix. It just requires a willingness to do the job. I can only assume the CC was built when you were presiding over the Park Dist. and you are grasping at slimy straws to try to justify the unjustifiable. It took almost six years of nonstop nagging for the current and immediate prior board to undo the neglect and attendant hogwash, resentful excuses from earlier Park District “management.” Their resistance to basic improvements was as unyielding as any union crew’s anywhere – and that resistance was fostered and allowed by six-figure executives and complaisant board members. The current and immediate prior board has demanded and received enormous improvements. If the City could do half as well, we’d all be better off.
EDITOR’S NOTE: No, it’s the utter and unmitigated truth.
The District’s buildings and grounds began to be neglected – with Hinkley Pool falling into such disrepair that it actually had to be closed because it was UNSAFE – almost the moment the servicing of the Community Center’s non-referendum bonded debt began. Then-exec. dir. Steve Meyer and those Park Board members who approved that debt were afraid of voter backlash if they raised taxes high enough to cover that debt service, so they didn’t raise them; and they lost that ability entirely when the PTELL tax caps were enacted in 1994.
And, no, this editor was not on the Board when that travesty occurred. To the contrary, he was elected five years later on a platform of ending that kind of irresponsible borrowing and spending without a referendum.
3/22-G. Mountcastle is not deserving of even an average grade and the raise to go along with it. Her actions along with those of the PRPD board have saddled the taxpayers with significant debt that will take years to pay off. The PRPD may just find itself in the same position as it was when it had to pay off the debt of the Community Center. Not enough money to properly maintain all the assets and properties of the PRPD.
The PRPD boards decision-at the direction of G. Mountcastle-to build a nearly $8,000,000 waterpark with out asking the taxpayers through referendum is nothing short of insulting and irresponsible. This is an asset used for at the very best 90 days of the year. It will be difficult for the waterpark to make enough money to cover basic operating expenses and let along the debt to build it.
G.Mountcastle also took another $400,000 out of reserve to add amenities to the waterpark which were not included when the board irresponsibly approved the building of the water park in Dec. of 2012. How long will it take to replenish these reserves? How much will fees and/or taxes go up to cover the cost to operate the waterpark? What other PRPD assets will be neglected to cover the waterpark costs?
And let’s not overlook to destruction of the park grounds and trees at Centennial to accommodate this waterpark. Or the $80,000 overrun of the reconstruction of just the north end of the parking lot. Or the campaigning/informing she did to get the YC referendum through-inappropriately using taxpayer money for lobbying for a bond referendum. Or the fact that the PRPD did not budget the more than $100,000 needed to take out the utilities on the YC property. Or the fact that the cost to maintain the property of the YC will be more than any revenue it may generate.
G. Mountcastle will likely be long gone when the true costs of her poor job performance and her self-promoting resume building actions come to light and the taxpayers of PR will be stuck paying the bills.
EDITOR’S NOTE: You are probably right. Frankly, we’d bet Mountcastle already is updating her resume for circulation the moment the Centennial water park (and its photo ops) comes on line – before the financial numbers start coming in – because that will put her near the peak of her marketability.
The Centennial water park will NEVER pay for itself: it will be lucky to cover its operating costs, and will never cover its debt service – which is why it should have gone to referendum. But because Mountcastle and the Board knew it would lose, they arrogantly and cowardly did it without a referendum.
Youth Campus Park is a different issue, because the voters affirmatively undertook the debt and the debt service. So as long as YCP can cover its operating costs, it’ll be an economic “win.” Although if Mountcastle and the Board would have had sufficient non-referendum bonding power that they could have gotten away with not going to referedum on the YCP, they would have done so.
No raise for Gayle Mountcastle. She does not deserve it.
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