Librarian Fights Back Against Public Worker Smears

Ann Sparanese, a librarian at the Englewood Public Library, wrote this letter to the Suburbanite, a local paper that covers several communities in north Bergen County in response to an attack on public workers by Rabbi Boteach in a "viewpoint" article (11/11/10 p.10), a misleading polemic against city workers.  After reading the article in yesterday's Record on the same theme - also confirming "FAST"'s intention to go after the library budget in particular -- she decided to send it out. Here is her letter:
 
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Some of Englewood's wealthiest residents are on a campaign to out-Christie-Christie on our municipal budget.  And, as Rabbi Boteach's "viewpoint "(11/11/10) exemplifies, he is willing to distort the truth and scapegoat all city workers to win. This campaign is having a disproportionate influence on the current negotiations for the budget: for example, City Manager Fitzpatrick has recently told the Englewood Public Library management to come up with a zero increase budget for 2011. This would be laughable if it weren't so pernicious, since the library represents only 3.6% of the City's 2010 budget. Even the governor doesn't project a zero cap.
 
As a librarian at the Englewood Public Library, I feel compelled to address the anti-public worker nonsense that Boteach and his indistinguishable kindred spirits at FAST (dontbankruptus.com) are trying to sell Englewoodians.
 
Boteach maintains that more than one-third of all City employees make over $100,000 per year, and the undercurrent is that somehow it is unions to blame for this. Once you exclude the salaries of fire and police - whose contracts are, like it or not, subject to special state interventions and who, apparently, make significant overtime - this is a deliberately misleading "fact" designed to stir up ire at all city workers.  At the Library, there is only one person who makes a six-figure salary, and that is the director, who is, of course, non-union.  While I cannot speak with authority on all other departments, it is probably the same at the Health Department, the DPW, Recreation and for union municipal office workers.  I am one of the three highest paid union librarians and our annual contractual wage for 2010 is $67,000. It took me 20 years and a master's degree to get to that salary and, like all city employees with that much time served, I also get a longevity increment of 7.5% (the highest level). Englewood is not Civil Service and therefore there are no "step increases."  All other union library classifications make less than me.
 
Taking all union salaries into account, our average contractual salary for all classifications is $53,700 in 2010, but there are more people at the lower end than the higher. Our "extremely generous" package includes evening and Saturday duty with no differential pay. We get 15 days sick-leave a year, not 25, as Boteach would have readers believe. The City does not pay into NJ State Disability fund as all private employers do, which means that employees must accumulate sick time to allow for a prolonged illness -- or be prepared to live with no income should that happen.  Our accumulated sick-leave pay at retirement is not fully compensated but capped - a cap which, in my own case, falls far below the value of my accumulated sick-leave. Our health benefits used to be much better, and in the future we'll be paying more and more for them, thereby eroding what are modest, but decent, salaries. When I retire, my pension is not likely to be more than $ 2500 per month -- and I have paid into my pension all these years, even though the state and city might not have.  Union library workers recently gave up differential Sunday pay through 2010, a contractual concession we made in order to help the library remain full-service.  Our contract expires at the end of 2011 and we fully expect to face even more demands for givebacks at the bargaining table.

I'm not complaining - I love my job - but Rabbi Boteach is simply not telling the truth about us.

At the Library, we work hard to serve the public, in the most fundamental, salutary way with more business hours than any other department (except for police and fire of course.)  With a 0% increase, is it realistic to think the Library can continue to do that? The real question is: Do Rabbi Boteach and the people at FAST even care? Are services like the public library valuable to them, or expendable because, like the public schools, they don't use them?

In my view, this wealthy group is slandering all city workers in order to try to recoup the money they lost due to the greed and irresponsibility of bankers and the financial industry, not city employees!  It is not our fault that their property values (might have) declined; I own a house in Englewood too and it is undoubtedly the same for me.  I have to laugh when I hear that "Englewood's insane taxes are only affordable by the superrich."  The fact is that of the 70 Bergen County communities, 42 have higher tax rates than Englewood. Our taxes fund our city services and our public schools, and they are spread proportionately according to the value of the properties that we own. The problem is that the "superrich" and the "merely-rich" want to renege on paying their fair share to maintain a full-service community for all. If they can't shift the burden to others by challenging their own tax assessments, they move to attacking public workers.

It is mean-spirited for people who have multi-million dollar homes to target people who make 40, 50 and 60 thousand dollar salaries. Their alternative to paying their current assessment is to move to a cheaper ward -- consider the Third Ward where taxes are more affordable -- or to one of those communities around us with fewer city services. The real estate revaluation several years ago resulted in the wealthier side of Englewood finally starting to carry their own weight in taxes.  The affluent of Englewood cannot have their cake and eat it too.  

Many of us who moved to Englewood did so because we want to live in a full-service community.  We do not "divide our time" between "Englewood and Miami Beach" and we are not in the forefront of those demanding the punitive austerity which is already decimating the library.   If police overtime is the problem, then get city management to deal reasonably with that.  If high management salaries are the problem, put them under the microscope. Stop painting every city worker, every public worker, every union member with the same brush, as if we are the ones responsible for the economic downturn. We aren't the greedy ones. As a person who will never get rich working for the City of Englewood, it seems to me that Rabbi Boteach is proposing a form of wealth redistribution that would put more money in his pocket by taking it directly out of mine. There is a gale force against public workers in NJ which Christie started, and which Rabbi Boteach, the like-minded members of FAST, and the Tea Party types, are all hoping will blow benefits their way.  It looks like class war to me, and I, for one, will not surrender without firing back.

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