City’s financial chief Paolino set to retire at year’s end

The man who helped orchestrate the city’s fiscal recovery and then negotiated the first voluntary give-backs from the police union is retiring from city work.

Director of Administration John Paolino, who announced this spring that he would leave at the end of the year, has now officially announced that he will retire on Dec. 31.

“It’s just time,” he said, adding that he wants to spend his retirement with his children and eight grandchildren.

“There’s nothing more important than my family,” he said.

Paolino actually retired 10 years ago, from his work as a finance administrator for school districts.

Then he was elected Rotterdam town supervisor in 2001. In 2004, while still supervisor, he joined Mayor Brian U. Stratton’s finance team to help turn around the city after Stratton was elected.

At the time, the city was in dire straits. The state comptroller warned Stratton that if nothing was done, Schenectady could run out of money within months, unable to even make payroll for city employees. The city was projected to end the year with a $10 million deficit if measures were not immediately taken.

Two years later, the city finished 2005 with a $4.9 million surplus. In 2006, Schenectady no longer needed to borrow money to get through the end of the year as it waited for taxes to come in. At its worst, the city’s cash flow was so tight that the city had borrowed $14.4 million in 2002 just make ends meet in December.

Although the city is not flush with money now, the city did not need to borrow to pay December expenses.

“Taking the finances of the city and restoring them was, without a doubt, very rewarding,” Paolino said. “And building a relationship with the unions that allowed us to successfully negotiate contracts.”

Paolino worked on many union contract negotiations, and under his tenure every city union eventually agreed to have its members make health insurance payments, with all new members continuing to pay even in retirement. Previously, many workers received free insurance throughout their career and in retirement.

The goal of the new plan is to eventually reduce Schenectady’s tremendous costs in supporting its retirees, Paolino said.

It took seven years to get every union to agree. The police finally accepted the deal in 2010.

But that wasn’t the only thing Paolino got the police to accept.

In the latest contract, police agreed to restrictions on comp time, which had been abused to the point where sometimes only a handful of officers would report for duty on summer weekend evenings. That’s one of the worst times for violent crime, but also one of the most popular for time off, and police often invoked their right to take comp time on nice evenings.

The city was forced to call officer after officer, begging them to come in on overtime to cover for those who told the department at the last minute that they would be taking a comp day.

Now, officers can accrue far fewer comp days, and only 5 of them can take a comp day at the same time.

Union leaders are also no longer allowed to take every day off for union business, as they used to while getting full pay from the city.

The officers also agreed to tougher drug testing and just 2 percent and 3 percent raises, far lower than the 4 percent raises they got in the last contract, which was written by an arbitrator because negotiations bogged down between the city and the police.

Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett said the contract would fundamentally change the police department.

“We’re talking culture change here,” he said. “The union has obviously come to grips with the fact that things can’t continue as they were.”

Paolino said he’ll miss Schenectady.

“It was a great part of my life.”

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