skyrocketing property taxes

[The Worm]

Your property taxes are skyrocketing?


Dover employees cash in on unused leave
By CLYNTON NAMUO
Union Leader Correspondent
16 hours, 41 minutes ago


Dover – City employees cashed in more than $1.3 million worth of unused leave over the last five years, including more than $140,000 in payments to Police Chief William Fenniman in fiscal year 2005, documents provided to the New Hampshire Union Leader yesterday show.

The documents detail how much the city paid individual employees for their unused leave in each fiscal year since 2003 and show a pattern of large payouts by several city department heads. The money is in addition to whatever salary the employees earn.

A Strafford County Superior Court judge ordered the salary documents released to the Union Leader last Thursday. The Union Leader filed a right-to-know request seeking the salary details in September, but city officials went to court last month questioning whether the law allowed them to release the information.

Fenniman has cashed out $167,247.16 in unused leave since fiscal 2003; including two payments of about $71,600 in fiscal 2005 that together far outstrip his yearly salary of about $114,000. Finance Director Jeffrey Harrington, who plans to retire at the end of this year, was paid $134,958.21 in fiscal 2003 for his leave, while Fire Chief Perry Plummer earned $73,464.74 for his leave during the same period.

The large payouts are due to the amount of leave each department head is afforded every year and their ability to cash out that leave, as well as previous accrued leave. Fenniman's contract provides him 70 days leave each year, while Plummer and Harrington each get 40 days worth.

Numerous non-department head employees also received large one-time leave payouts, usually in the tens of thousands of dollars, for accrued leave just prior to retiring.

The late payouts are meant to pump up their final year's salary and subsequently their benefits through the New Hampshire State Retirement System, Mayor Scott Myers said yesterday. The large payouts are skewing benefits and could compromise the retirement system in the long run, Myers said, but little has been done to stop it because of resistance from employee unions.

Myers said large amounts of leave, or cash payouts if they aren't used, are provided for in some city department head contracts negotiated and approved by former City Manager Paul Beecher without the oversight of the city council. The city's merit plan, which dictates what powers the city manager is afforded, has since been amended to mandate council approval of department head contracts, Myers said.

More recent department head contracts limit leave and its accrual, Myers said, but some older contracts allowing for higher payouts remain in place with the only solution being for the employees to leave their jobs, Myers said.

"We know we're on the right track. It's just going to take a little time, through natural attrition, to move some of the contracts out and replace them with newer contracts," he said.

Harrington, Fenniman and Plummer have each been with the city for more than 20 years.

Some individual contracts have also been amended to rein in growing salaries and leave time, including Plummer's and Fenniman's, but the payouts have continued. An amendment to Fenniman's contract, signed in February, freezes his current salary and stops any increases to his leave time, but also gives him six months pay should he leave his job, for any reason, before July 1 of next year.