Our
Town:
Compton-born Playwright Turns Life’s Observations Into Drama
City Treasurer Warns Council It’s Spending Too Much
City Aims to Shut Down Auto Shop Where Murder Took Place
Victory Outreach Awarded Nearly $.5 M to Augment City Services
Permit Parking Finally On Its Way
Safety Seat Checkup Scheduled at South LA Mall
Hub City Youth Headed to National Track and Field Championships
CUSD Still ‘Not Out of the Woods’ as State Legislators Work Toward Final Budget
Earl
Ofari
Hutchinson:
Jackson Should Apologize to Blacks for His N-word Hypocrisy
Questionable
Contracts Again Come Before Council
Two former
city staffers hired again; duties include assisting with million-dollar
police study
By
Allison Jean Eaton
Bulletin Staff Writer
COMPTON – The
City Council last week renewed contracts with two former city employees
despite promises by city administrators over the past two years that
the contracts would not come back before the Council.
The Council July 15 voted 4-1, Councilman Isadore Hall casting the
lone “no” vote, to again contract with Wanda Allen and
Betty Smith, two former Personnel Department employees who retired
from the city in December 2003. Since their retirement, they have been
hired by the city as contractors on a continual basis.
Allen is also a former Compton Police Department employee.
This year, the two will each be paid $55,000 at an hourly rate of $35 “for
professional services to perform analytical work, research projects
and to assist in the revision of procedures, manuals and to perform
related tasks as required,” according to July 15 staff reports
and correlating resolutions.
Among the tasks Allen and Smith are charged with, said City Manager
Charles Evans, is work on the $1 million police study currently being
conducted by former Compton police chief and former City Manager Joseph
T. Rouzan.
The research the women are conducting alongside Rouzan “will
supplement that and other activities that the city is involved in,” said
Evans.
Although Rouzan’s contract to study the feasibility of launching
a city-based police department was not approved until this past spring,
work on that study, according to various city sources, has been taking
place at the city’s CareerLink WorkSource Center on Bullis Road
since at least late 2007.
“They’re in a lot of places,” said Evans of Allen
and Smith. “They’re
at Bullis Road, they’re at personnel (the Personnel Department)… They’re
involved in personnel issues and they’re providing support where
our office feels it is needed.”
Asked if the work the women are completing could have been done by
current city staffers, Evans said: “Possibly, but not without
paying a tremendous amount of overtime.”
Previous contracts with the two women were solely for work within the
Personnel Department, according to staff reports.
Prior to 2006, that department was without a director, which necessitated
their assistance in recruiting for and filling the city’s then
high volume of vacancies. However, when Kareemah Bradford was hired
in 2006 to take the department’s helm, both Allen and Smith were
curiously kept on.
At the time, then City Manager Barbara Kilroy told The Bulletin that
although a director had been hired, the “unusually large” number
of positions that remained unfilled required the city to contract out.
“Rather than hiring a permanent employee(s) to solve a temporary
problem, we are using part-time, retired employees to advertise and
test. Our
goal is to fill all our outstanding vacancies in a timely manner and
without resorting to long-term temporary hires,” Kilroy said
in a 2006 e-mail.
That was a sentiment echoed by Evans last week. He said the city did
not want to hire permanent employees for temporary positions.
“It is our anticipation that the need for these two positions
will dissipate over time,” he said.
In 2006, Kilroy personally guaranteed that contracts for the two would
not come back before the Council after two council members complained,
one labeling the move as “gross negligence.”
In 2006, Hall and Councilwoman Barbara Calhoun were vocal in their
disapproval.
“I hope that this is not a process to circumvent the hiring of
people who could actually be in those positions doing that kind of
work,” said
Hall in 2006. “I would think that two years ago (prior to Allen’s
and Smith’s retirement) we would have or should have known that
we would need individuals in human resources to recruit so that we
wouldn’t even be here dealing with this.
“Were they trying to save themselves a job by not seeing or recognizing
the fact that we needed people to do their work two years ago? We wouldn’t
be here today. So, I mean, what are we doing here? Are we covering
jobs here?
“To me, it looks like a situation of job security for our contractors,” continued
Hall two years ago. “I’m not trying to bring back retired
cops or retired city employees and giving them a second go-round as
employees on a contract. I’m not interested in that.”
Hall was the only individual on the dais to take issue with the contracts
last week.
“I think that our Personnel Department needs to get on their
job,” said
a frustrated Hall. “Like I said six months ago, like I said a
year ago, like I said two years ago, like I said three years ago, the
Personnel Department needs to get on their job and hire staff to be
able to move the department forward to do job specs, analytical data
research, etc., etc., etc.
“I was guaranteed on several occasions that we would not have
to have this before us again, and so I won’t be able to support
it again. I was told that that would be the last time that this contract
would
be brought up, and I see it once again.”
Although he voted for the contracts, Mayor Eric J. Perrodin said Hall “brought
up a good point.”
The mayor added that Allen and Smith’s “intellectual knowledge” is
needed in the Personnel Department.
Allen and Smith were first awarded contracts in November 2004, just
shy of a year following their retirements, when the Council approved
paying each $18,000 to “expedite the recruitment and examination
process” in the Personnel Department, according to Nov. 9, 2004
staff reports.
Then on March 8, 2005, resolutions aiming to amend and extend both
contracts by an amount not to exceed $10,000 came before the Council
and were approved. Just four months later on July 5, 2005, Allen and
Smith were awarded additional contracts for $21,600 apiece. Less than
seven months later, the Council on Dec. 20, 2005 again approved $21,600
contracts for the two. In July 2006, each was awarded another $21,600
contract.
Including this latest contract, which is more than double the last
contract’s price, each woman has made $147,800 through contracts
with the city.
Before retiring, both women worked for the city for 30-plus years.
ADVERTISE | CLASSIFIEDS | ABOUT US | CONTACT US | SUBSCRIBE | HOME
This site and its contents ©2008 thecomptonbulletin.com