Haines Borough manager Bill Seward’s attempt to give clerk Julie Cozzi a raise was cut short this week when an assembly member advised it might not be the best time for such a proposal.
Ironically, assembly member Mike Case was the one to step in and prevent the proposal from coming forward at the Personnel Committee meeting Monday. In January, Case proposed bumping Cozzi’s salary from $70,000 to $85,000, but eventually pulled the question from the assembly agenda after it drew backlash from members of the public and assembly.
“I do think that (Cozzi) deserves a raise, but this is not the right time for it,” Case said. “I think all non-union staff should be considered for pay adjustments at a later date.”
According to the current budget, Cozzi makes $76,295, or $36.68 an hour.
On Friday, Seward said though he had only been on the job for five days, he wanted to float the idea of a salary bump at a Personnel Committee meeting he scheduled for Monday.
“Every time I start talking about something or we start exploring certain solutions, our next stop is almost always Julie’s office. And she is probably the most knowledgeable person we have on our staff, and she is intimately familiar with the borough’s code and the proper protocol for borough business,” Seward said.
Seward said he was “shocked” when he went through borough salaries and saw Cozzi’s.
“She’s the backbone of the borough,” he said. “I think she’s very underpaid for what she produces for the borough and I just want to correct that.”
When Case got wind of the proposal to raise Cozzi’s salary, he contacted Seward and asked him to remove the item from the committee’s agenda.
“I just think it’s a question of getting his feet on the ground. He recognizes that our senior staff is underpaid,” Case said. “But there is a time to do that when you get less flack than others, and you will always get flack, but you want to minimize it.”
The borough put out an amended public notice on Monday with the clerk discussion removed from the agenda.