The pay 'outrage' in Bell, CA, really started 17 years ago when the City Manager was hired. Whom ever it was that set up his contract is at fault.

His contract called for a 12% raise every year he was there. There was no upper limit or salary range.

He hired on at about $35,000 a year. The salary range on this job should have been something like a min of $30,000 and a max of $65,000 or so. Without a salary max the sky was truly the limit.

I knew a guy that was getting, since his uncle was a VP at the company, a 14% raise each year. He really did little beyond showing up. It took him about 6 years to max out his salary range and one year he got a raise of .002% because that was as high as he could go.

We told him the trouble was not that he was getting paid less that year than he was worth but it was because he had been getting paid more than he was worth for the last 6 years.