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11/29/2007
Just FYI stuff - salaries and sub-primes
At last week’s town budget meeting, about 20 Grand Chute residents would not approve the 2008 budget, questioning what they understood were excessive salary increases. So that all residents can be informed about the issue, all Grand Chute salaries are posted on FoxPolitics.net. Town Administrator Mark Rohloff was very helpful with my request, responding immediately, and getting 100% of information to me in a very usable format in less than 24 hours.
A couple of quick comparisons. As you can guess, it’s difficult to compare positions when comparative responsibilities aren’t known. Nevertheless, all 2007 salaries for Grand Chute, Neenah, Menasha and Appleton are available – have at it.
Police Officer Appleton 23.77/hour Menasha 24.75 Neenah 24.69 Grand Chute 22.64
Mechanic Appleton 22.79 (Master Mechanic) Menasha 18.63 to 23.06 Neenah 21.43 Grand Chute 20.16
On a completely different subject, Brian Heyer, a FoxPolitics News reader and a CPA, alerted FoxPolitics to what’s going on in Florida, where the state-run “short term” pool, meant for parking liquid funds of school districts and municipalities, is in big trouble. Florida last week pulled $8B out of the pool after learning the money-market fund contained more than $700 million of defaulted (sub-prime mortgage-related) debt. Wow.
Wisconsin’s municipal money market fund is in good shape. Vicki Hearing, the Public Information Officer for the State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB), says our State Investment Fund (SIF) is valued at $6.8 billion and holds funds from many governmental units across the state. No part of the portfolio has been downgraded, not a single dollar is invested in sub-prime mortgage-related instruments. The same is true for the full $90B managed by SWIB (primarily public employee retirement dollars); these funds contain no direct investment in sub-primes, though two private equity funds are permitted to hold them. The year-to-date return (Oct. 31) of the WI SIF is 4.4%, beating their benchmark of 4.0%.
Good news. I’ll take it.
I’m not sure I was impressed yesterday with Rep. Kagen as he discussed immigration with the masses. Did anyone else attend any of his roundtable immigration sessions this week? Words on that tomorrow.
COMMENTS
When will someone publish a breakdown of the "fringe benefits" for the non-represented employees in the Town of Grand Chute? This information is now available to the elected officials but is not on the town's Web site.

Ron (Thu Nov 29 08:34:06 2007)
The problems come from lack of information, the meeting was poorly attended because of Christmas parade,
other commitments, and total lack of information as to the content of the meeting and what was on the agenda that night. Too bad the media is not properly informed with an accurate press release instead of called in "tips".

(Thu Nov 29 20:38:24 2007)
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