Yesterday, Aaron Montes of KTSM 9 News reported that City Manager Gonzalez and City Attorney Karla Nieman, the two highest paid City employees, have earned merit raises stemming from their 2021 performance evaluations.
Their salaries are set to rise to approximately $398,401 and $266,641, respectively.
On their evaluations, Gonzalez scored 3.81 on a scale of 1 to 4, and Nieman scored 4.18 on a scale of one to five.
Not surprisingly, Montes reports that “The city is only releasing total scores and generalized comments from the mayor and City Council […], which means the public will not know how each city representative and the mayor scored the city manager and city attorney on their performances until a ruling from the Texas Attorney General is made.”
Montes appended the relevant documentation to the end of his report.
Since Gonzalez was appointed City manager in 2014, the City property tax has risen 38%. Our overall property tax is now the second highest among the 50 largest cities in the United States, just behind Detroit. Incentives and abatements for developers and corporations have reached an-all time record. In addition, non-voter approved debt in the form of certificates of obligation has shot up by hundreds of millions of dollars and has been used not only to retire older debt with higher interest rates, but also to pay for infrastructure initiatives and cost overruns on Quality of Life Bond projects.
Have a great afternoon.
Photo credit: KFOX, https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/el-paso-city-attorney-manager-eligible-for-pay-increase