City Administrator Ifo Pili Wants a Raise . . .

. . . and Mayor Pengra wants to give it to him.

If you want to stop it, please contact your council members today since the vote on his new contract will be at tonight’s (4-4-2017) council meeting.

Below is a copy of an email I sent to Eagle Mountain’s city council yesterday describing why he should not get it.

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Dear Council Members:

This morning I filed a GRAMA request for a copy of City Administrator Ifo Pili’s employment contract with Eagle Mountain City. While I am waiting for this document, I thought I’d send you a quick note about what I already know about his compensation.

(1) When he was hired to replace John Hendrickson, the last city administrator, his starting pay as a first-year administrator was $161,498. This was MORE than Hendrickson’s ending pay of $153,621 even though he had 38 years of experience. What this indicates to me is that Pili was WAY overpaid when he first took this job. Normally, first-time administrators are paid near the bottom of the pay scale because of their lack of experience.

(2) When the city sent out the agenda for tomorrow’s council meeting it included the following text,

“Mr. Pili has served as the City Administrator since 2012 and has not received a pay raise or other form of increased compensation during his tenure as City Administrator.” (emphasis added)

Attached to this email are pdf screenshots of Pili’s compensation since FY2012 from the state’s transparency website. If you review them, you will find that this statement is patently false.

Total Compensation
FY2013 — $161,498
FY2014 — $166,539
FY2015 — $169,094
FY2016 — $162,050

In all three of the fiscal years after he took over, he made MORE than he first did when he became our city administrator. But my guess is that he intentionally lowered his take-home pay in FY2016 so it would look like he hasn’t made any more money, which would help him convince you that it was time to give him a big raise. This is the kind of “cooking the books” that’s typical in Eagle Mountain.

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I am deeply concerned that we are overpaying our city employees and breaking the bank, especially when he have so many other urgent spending priorities. Shortly after Pili became our city administrator our city’s payroll expenses rose about $500k in only two years for just some of the city’s full time staff. I don’t think we should reward our city administrator with a raise for doing such a bad job of holding down our costs.

Although I haven’t produced an updated salary survey yet, I know that we could save at least $500k annually, and probably $1 million, if we just brought our employee costs into line with our more frugal neighbors. Saratoga Springs and Lehi are horrible examples to follow because their administrators are equally bad at holding the line on the costs of their own staff wages and benefits.

Please, don’t give Pili a raise. The man doesn’t deserve it. Instead, I think it’s time to start shopping around for a new administrator because this one has been involved in so many of the city’s scandals, including the credit card fraud and the building and development fraud going on in the city.

If you would like more information about any of these scandals, please visit eagleshare.org or contact me directly.

Regards,

Sam Allen

Links to supporting attachments:
Eagle Mountain employee raises FY2012-2014 — select full-time employees
Ifo Pili’s 2012 Employment Contract
Pili FY2012 gross compensation
Pili FY2013 gross compensation
Pili FY2014 gross compensation
Pili FY2015 gross compensation
Pili FY2016 gross compensation
Hendrickson FY2012 gross compensation
Excerpt from 4-4-2017 council agenda

Note: If you examine Pili’s employment contract closely you’ll notice that no one proof read it properly. Line item #3 is at the bottom of page 1 and repeated again at the top of page 2. This level of unprofessionalism is typical of our city attorney’s performance. It was most likely drafted by City Attorney Jeremy Cook, another overpaid Eagle Mountain city official.