What is the maximum the SCA Board can pay the GM?

Apparently, the sky is the limit

“The Board could pay the GM $1 million/year if they wanted.”  – former SCA CAM Lori Martin (in response to my information requests in November 2016)

This shocking pronouncement shows what SCA owners have faced since SCA began employing all staff directly instead contracting with a management company to run day-to-day operations.

What are they thinking?

The Board is being severely ill-advised, and it is costing owners way more than is necessary. Worse, how executive compensation is set at SCA has failed to conform to professional standards, Nevada law, SCA governing documents, or even common sense.

More than Henderson City Manager

In the R-J today, there was an article publishing that, yesterday, the interim Henderson City Manager was permanently appointed at an annual salary of $235,000, 

Apparently, SCA Board feels the SCA GM’s level of responsibility exceeds that of Henderson’s City Manager, but does it?

  • 390,000 city population vs. 7,144 SCA units
  • 1,933 F/T employees vs 46 F/T SCA employees
  • Operating budget of $244 million vs. SCA $8.5 mil

Click here for City of Henderson fact sheet

I don’t see any justification for it, and determining  employee compensation was one of the things I used to do for a living.

How much is SCA’s GM being paid?

Owners can’t know for sure what the GM is being paid in 2018 despite NRS 116.31175 and SCA bylaws 6.4(a)(i) affirming that owners have a LEGAL right to know what employees are getting paid.

The January 2017 SCA table of employee salaries was provided to another unit owner, before Adam Clarkson, SCA’s legal counsel, began creating an unlawful veil of secrecy, asserting that the GM had some imaginary privacy rights which exceeded owners’ rights to know how our money is being spent.

The GM’s compensation was publicly known over a year and a half ago, and it’s just a waste of everybody’s time, money and energy to try to hide it now.

Sorry, Adam, it’s legally out in the open. You can’t pretend it’s confidential now. You simply can’t unring that bell.

When SCA got rid of the FSR management company, and the GM took over in April, 2016, the GM was paid $250,000.

By January 2017 the SCA GM was paid a base salary of $257,000 plus a $20,000 bonus.

Does the GM now get paid $22,000 more than Henderson’s City Manager?

Yes, and only, assuming that

  • her 2017 base pay of $257,000 stayed flat.
  • she was given no COLA (cost of living increase)
  • her 2017 bonus expired on 12/31/17
  • no bonus is being paid out for 2018
  • no performance increase from the 3% budgeted for employee performance increases

I don’t know what you think, but I think it is pretty unlikely ALL of those assumptions are true. So, her salary could closer to 20% higher than Henderson pays its manager.

Is her pay AT LEAST $42,000/year more than the city’s manager?

My guess is that she is being paid at least $277,000 because…

Inertia

It seems like the Board would let her carry her 2017 annual bonus forward into 2018. I think they would be reluctant to take $20,000 even though that is the way a pay system should work. So, the default position is “let it ride“.

The “Halo Effect”

I also imagine they probably carried her last year bonus forward despite all the myriad complaints against her because

  • they repeatedly and publicly chastising owners for signing a petition for a vote of no confidence against her and because of
  • their adamant refusal to address any of the petitioners’ criticisms on their merits and
  • they didn’t hold her accountable for the failing to meet her deadline on the restaurant or for mediating the FAS-CSG dispute or for failing to de-escalate the community divide

The cone of silence

It would be an egregious sleight of hand, contrary to professional standards, for the Board to authorize rolling a $20,000 bonus into her base pay, but there is ZERO evidence to show that the Board didn’t do just that, and then kept it a secret.

These actions are all a big no-no

A bonus is supposed to be earned every year. It is NEVER just moved into base pay without an EXPLICIT public action by the Board.

But there are worse scenarios

  • if the 2017 bonus were rolled into base pay, and then
  • a 2018 $20,000 bonus added on top of that,
  • ending up at a whopping $297,000 salary for 2018.

Even worse…

than paying $297,000 could be giving a 3% increase from the 2018 budgeted 3% pool for employee increases.

I’ll try to stop imagining the worst

I won’t even put that number ($297,000 + 3%) out in the universe because I don’t think it is possible that SCA Board would go that far off track.

And yet, follow the money

If they didn’t increase her pay in 2018, why would they spend so much money and political capital to hide what owners are paying her for what is little more than property management?

I also wonder how the GM and SCA attorney can honestly claim they are acting as fiduciaries, solely and exclusively, acting for the benefit of the SCA membership, when the GM uses the SCA attorney to threaten legal action against owners who exercise their legal rights to KNOW how much owners are paying employees.