You can take Larry Stobbs out of the Highway Patrol, but you can’t take the patrol out of our former mayor.

Our fair Larry called last week to gently clarify a fine point in a series of recent stories about the present council wrestling again with city pay and City Hall’s mystical pay matrix. Voters approved a half-cent sales tax that ended up funding the start of the salary matrix.

But in Mayor Larry’s “Unabridged History of City Government,” voters faced a different option when they went to vote on the sales tax in April 2001. The council agreed first to adopt the new pay plan for city workers. The sales tax proposal went on the ballot with the hammer that if voters rejected it, the city would have to cut services.

The pay matrix that promised city workers wonderfully generous raises was never part of the sales tax campaign, the former mayor argued. Actually, you can’t argue with Larry. Oh, you can, but you might just as well argue with a trooper handing you a speeding ticket. They smile. They are personable. But they don’t listen.

There is a seed of truth in Mayor Larry’s version of history. The council did agree to raise city pay to 90 percent of the market average before it put the sale tax proposal on that April ballot. In a sense, voters were given the option of supporting the tax to prevent cuts in other city services.

But a review of the stories from that campaign shows that the sales tax proposal and pay promise were always indelibly intertwined. Here is an excerpt from our main preview story on the sales tax proposal a week before the vote:

City officials say they’ve put off bringing municipal employees’ salaries up to regional market levels for more than a decade. They’ve promised to implement a $4.6 million compensation fix by October. That would put city workers’ average wage at 90 percent of the market, which is consistent with studies showing the local cost of living is about 90 percent of the national average.

But without more revenue, the fix will come at the expense of layoffs and service reductions.

Every dime of the new money went into the magical pay matrix that was adopted after the half-cent sales tax passed that April. So, Mayor Larry can argue that the sales tax was not a pay raise sales tax until his face turns blue (which he has been known to do). But I ain’t buying that line.

The pay matrix is back in our headlines because of two basic flaws in the original intent of the sales tax. The fatal flaw sprang from the basic assumption that the natural growth of the sales tax revenue would be enough to come up with the money to pay for the hefty annual raises (as much as 4 percent to 5 percent hikes annually) needed to keep city salaries up with the so-called “comparable” communities. A dip in the economy — OK, Democrats would call it a full-fledged recession — proved that premise flimsy at best.

The matrix also lost some favor when the present council basically swept into office at the expense of the previous council. This council came into City Hall with a collective eye on appeasing taxpayers weary of a sometimes arrogant city government. It made sewers and improved communications the new top priorities. Matrix disappeared from the City Hall lexicon for the last two years.

Now if I were a betting man, and I’m not, I would bet that this council will do everything it can to give city workers a matrix-esque raise this year. The debate started with an updated survey of “comparable” cities that indicated Joetown needed to come up with at least $2.7 million to rescue the matrix promise.

After some questions (and some good reporting) about the comparison that included some fairly prosperous communities, the city recalibrated the survey. The new comparison trimmed the bill down to $947,000. You can almost hear the votes lining up at City Hall.

Deputy Mayor Mike Hirter is our retired police chief. Check. Councilman Roger Baker is a retired firefighter. Check. Councilwomen Donna Jean Boyer and Joyce Starr appear to be competing for the title of Queen of Public Safety. Check and check.

City employees (and unions) are left to fish for a final vote from the pool of Mayor Ken Shearin and Councilmen Bill Falkner, Mike Bozarth and Gary Roach. Councilwoman Barbara LaBass is apparently swimming in a more skeptical pool that she generally shares with Mayor Kenny, Mr. Falkner and Mr. Bozarth. City employees can be very effective lobbyists, especially when council members are just a couple of years away from seeking another term.

If the city workers do get a raise, former Mayor Larry still will deserve some of the credit. He is right when he says he was the mayor who pushed city salaries to the top of the budget agenda for City Hall. Even an informal nod for a raise package at the start of the budget debates means the council’s remaining job is to find the money to pay for that raise as the council cruises through the rest of the budget hearings.

The next question could be whether this council musters the nerve to take a public safety tax to voters to make this pay hike work. I wouldn’t bet on that one.

Mark Sheehan’s column runs on

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