Chesterfield Township Officials Want Major Pay Hikes Despite Other Cutbacks

Chesterfield Township's three full-time elected officials are seeking major pay raises in the 2012 proposed budget, despite an expected general fund deficit.

If approved at the 3:30 p.m. Nov. 1 budget hearing in the , Supervisor Michael Lovelock will see an annual salary increase from $60,460 to $90,000 while Clerk Jan Uglis and Treasurer Linda Hartman will each go from making $57,820 a year to $68,500.

"This is something that has never been brought up in 10 years," Lovelock, representing himself, Uglis and Hartman, told Patch Monday. "There's no good time to bring this up."

They will discuss the matter before the board at the budget hearing, he said during a conference call with the other two, full-time officials present.

"It, believe you me, will have a packed house," he said. "We don't even know what the board is going to say."

In Lovelock's State of the Township address last April, he boasted a  due to energy reductions, savings in municipal car and building insurance and other measures, such as wage freezes.

But, the pay raise request comes on the heels of an anticipated $500,000 budget shortfall for 2012, at a time when tax revenue is decreasing dramatically.

In the summer, township Financial Director Victoria Bauer said, "our tax revenue has decreased 22 percent since 2008, or nearly $2 million."

That revenue drop off was expected to put the township on shaky financial grounds.

“We’ve been losing revenue so fast that it’s hard to keep up with,” Bauer said in July.

This year community officials took steps to whittle down spending in the township--some of which Lovelock cited as necessary.

In January, the Board of Trustees approved for clerical employees and department heads. At the time, Lovelock told Patch the pay freezes have "never in the history of Chesterfield" been done, to his knowledge. He said it was expected to save the community about $100,000. Similar wage freezes were in place for other township employees, such as police officers in which their estimated a $50,000 savings, Lovelock said at the time.

Meanwhile, the community's K-9 unit is not going to be replaced upon the retirement of the last police dog Bulzi at the end of this year. The unit was deemed too costly because of training and other expenses associated with it.

Cutbacks have been felt elsewhere in the community. During the last Chesterfield Township Board of Trustees meeting, Fire Chief Doug Charbonneau said that his department lost 33 percent of its manpower in 2007 and has been operating at low staffing levels ever since. 

"I'm not going to try my case to the media," Lovelock said. "I'm going to try my case to the people of Chesterfield."

Check back with Patch for updates.