January 5, 2025

The Community Digest is TIMBER’s newsletter on recent news impacting Troy and surrounding communities. For the next month, we are breaking up our round-ups by theme to cover more ground.

This digest covers vacancies. The next two digests will dive specifically into lead service line replacement and finances.

The January 2025 vacancy list shows 55 open positions throughout the City of Troy. Several notable vacancies appear to be missing from this month’s list. Of the vacancies that are included, over 60% are in CSEA’s bargaining unit.

The number of vacancies has climbed almost every month since April 2024, when the city hit a low of 30. There are more vacancies in CSEA’s bargaining unit alone today than there were across the entire city workforce nine months ago.

MUSICAL DECK CHAIRS

• CORPORATION COUNSEL: Dana Salazar resigned as Troy’s Corporation Counsel in early December 2024. Salazar was hired as Deputy Corporation Counsel on January 3, 2024 at a salary equal to that of the then-Corporation Counsel. The two attorneys swapped titles in February 2024 after Salazar was officially appointed. Although the former Corporation Counsel remains on staff and has been identified as Corporation Counsel on important documents throughout the year, he has not been appointed to his previous position.

• CITY ENGINEER: On January 3, 2024. Russ Reeves was hired as City Engineer for $125,000. Reeves was said to have resigned at the end of November 2024. The December 2024 and January 2025 reports list the City Engineer position as still vacant.

• SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES: On January 1, 2024, Russ Reeves also began collecting a $50,000 stipend under premium pay in a budget code that did not exist. This stipend compensated Reeves for dual service as DPU Superintendent. His appointment was confirmed by the City Council on January 18, 2024. The premium pay appropriation was approved on February 1, 2024. Unlike City Engineer, Superintendent of Public Utilities is not on the January 2025 vacancy list.

• COMPTROLLER: Troy has been without a Comptroller since the last one resigned voluntarily in early July. The city has allegedly been down to two final candidates for approximately half a year. As ever, we should expect news in two weeks.

• DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC INFORMATION: Troy’s third Deputy Director of Public Information of 2024 started in December. Despite turnover within the position, Troy’s FOIL compliance significantly improved throughout 2024 as far as we have seen. The new Deputy Director of Public Information has been exceptionally responsive and thorough.

LABORER V. OFFICER

While advocating for the Council to approve a new police contract in June 2024, the Deputy Mayor expressed shock that a laborer on the payroll had earned more than a police officer. What we infer he meant was that police officers needed raises immediately because they are more valuable to the administration than laborers, so even marginal overlap between their salary ranges is too much.

Mission accomplished. Although many Troy laborers will only earn $37,420 in salaries this year, a few of the most experienced ones will be basking in an opulent $50,239. With police officers now starting at $53,958, the laborer fat cats have finally been cut down to size. Roughly half of the PBA unit was already taking home six figures from overtime compensation, but it is plausible that many rank-and-filers did not know that, so this was an effective multipronged approach to communicating the administration’s employee hierarchy more straightforwardly to the people at the top and bottom of it.

We return to this exchange now because the January vacancy report coincidentally has laborers and police officers tied at 11 openings apiece. This is notable in part because the city budgets for almost three times as many police officers as it does laborers, so the laborer vacancy rate is much higher. In other words, Troy has a harder time recruiting laborers than it does police officers, and the number of starting or near-starting laborer salaries in the 2025 budget tells us that Troy struggles to retain those who they do hire.

In the labor market, wages are determined by what workers will accept – not what executives think they deserve. The distance between those two expectations is expressed through vacancies, and Troy’s are steadily climbing. Raises are one way to close that gap and treating employees with a bit of respect is another.

AN ABNORMAL LAYOFF

In early November, a Sign Maintenance Person was abruptly terminated by Troy due to “Ø funds in budget.” Although personnel documents, civil service paperwork, and CSEA’s CBA all say or indicate that this was a permanent employee in CSEA’s bargaining unit, the union section of their separation form was curiously left empty while the budget code was for temporary salaries. Their hiring paperwork was also clearly edited to budget the position under temporary salaries despite conveying that it was a permanent position directly beneath that.

It is unusual that the separation notice drafted a month after their termination does not cc CSEA’s president, who might have appreciated the opportunity to step in to clarify the employee’s union status or fight for a member’s job. As the employee’s supervisor who verbally informed him of his termination, he was nevertheless probably aware of their separation.

Regrettably, salary savings from 55 city vacancies did not give the Mantello administration enough financial wiggle room to prevent this layoff. The employee’s supervisor (who is – we will stress again – also somehow the union president) had better luck with timely budget amendments early last year when he gave himself a $18,712 raise.

THE BARGAINING TABLE

Union contracts for Troy’s civil service employees, firefighters, and administrators have all officially expired. In a strictly legal sense, public sector executives in New York State have the upper hand when this happens because state law prohibits government employees from striking. Informally, unions in Troy benefit from wielding quite a lot of influence over the electorate (particularly in odd-year elections), so it is politically harmful to work against them. It is also operationally harmful for a city with Troy’s vacancy rate, since better terms and conditions of employment help to attract employees. It may be unlawful for public sector employees to strike, but it is perfectly legal to quit a job that they do not like.

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