The week after the city voted for their pay raises, the discussion in our office was about staff voting for themselves a pay raise. We all agreed it was a good idea, a straw poll was taken and we smiled at our new-found wealth.
Then someone pointed out we needed to contact corporate and tell them of our decision.
The chatter and glee in the office faded away, people moved back to their desks and we quietly got back to work. That’s the real world most honest, hard-working folk live in.
Government gluttony
In more than 25-years of covering city, county and school boards I have never seen such blatant disregard for stewardship of taxpayer dollars as I witnessed this past month with our Clarksdale Board of Mayor and Commissioners.
It was a $20,000 raise for commissioners and a $36,000 raise for our mayor.
The mayor’s raises alone is more than most single mothers make working two jobs at local fast food restaurants.
And the thing that seems to have aggravated citizens the most is they did it less than a week after being re-elected and they did it behind closed doors.
We have posted multiple stories and printed multiple Letters to the Editor on this issue and the greed of Clarksdale’s city leadership has now hit the television stations in Memphis, 22 Emmerich newspapers across Mississippi and the Jackson newspaper.
Bo Plunk said he got calls from across the state over the past weeks wanting to know what was going on in Clarksdale.
With all the problems that Clarksdale has, I would like to know how he explained the pay raise.
The numbers
I am embarrassed by the numbers. I am even more embarrassed by those who want to make it a racial issue.
Let’s look at the numbers. They are black and white and there is nothing racial about them.
• The raises will make our mayor one of the highest paid mayors in one of the poorest communities in the state. Commissioners will be the highest paid of any city official in the poorest state in the country.
• The mayor’s raise is more than the starting salary for the less privileged city employees -- police and firefighters -- who fight crooks and rush into burning building when they have to.
• Commissioners, who are styled by the city charter as part-time employees, will be making $44 an hour for a 20-hour work week.
• The $416,400 pay raise given to all city employees, mayor and commissioners would pave eight miles of city streets in Clarksdale at $50,000 a mile.
• Our city property taxes and car tags are some of the highest in the state. Think about that the next time you pay yours.
It could have been
What could Clarksdale have been if Bo Plunk, Ken Murphey, Willie Turner, Ed Seals and Chuck Espy had put that money elsewhere?
How many juveniles would have taken a different path with a proper after-school program for our youth.
How many homeless people could be helped if that money had been spent on feeding and housing our destitute.
How many non-profits in our town could offer more diapers, teach more kids to read, renovate more houses, beautify the city and pick up more trash with those dollars.
Clarksdale’s leadership missed their chance. The raises may be legal but they were not right.
Floyd Ingram is Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register and disappointed in his city. Please call him at 662-627-2201 with some good news.
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