Questionable savings from charter change

PHOTOGRAPHER: Letters to the Editor

Re Oct. 15 letter, “Kelly supports better Spa City government”: Jeff Altamari, the architect of the Saratoga Springs Charter Commission’s misleading financial analysis of the proposed charter, may know Wall Street, but he doesn’t know Main Street.

Mr. Altamari’s confidence in the savings he claims will accrue from a change to a city manager form depends heavily on the elimination of the four existing commissioners and the five full-time deputies.

This assumption is especially stunning, since for all the interviewing, they like to say they did, the commission never talked to the deputies to find out what they do. Curiously, they haven’t actually eliminated these positions in the charter, but provided that the deputies will “serve at the pleasure of the City Manager.” (Section 8.09.)

Mr. Altamari displays no understanding of how civil service and public employee unions figure into the elimination and reconfiguration of work responsibilities. City Hall isn’t the corporate world, where jobs are eliminated and employees assigned new responsibilities at the discretion of the boss.

He and the Charter Commission and their supporters may find they are in for sticker shock when the true value of the work the deputies do is assigned to a new and more expensive civil service positions by the new city manager.

Jane Weihe

Saratoga Springs