Gender in City Hall

I made a comment about gender in City Hall the other day. Of course, people immediately freaked out and said that I was accusing someone of being sexist. That was not what I was doing. However, it did get me thinking even more. Working in City Hall it seems as though I work with many men, and very few women. And those women I did work with seem to be disappearing. I looked at the City’s organizational chart (new planning and development chart on page 51) and here is what I found.

Men in Charge of Departments and Divisions
*City Assessor – Mark Hanson
*City Attorney – Michael May (previously Eunice Gibson)
City Comptroller – Dean Brasser
*Human Services – Roger Goodwin (position previously held by a woman)
Information Service – Richard Grasmick
City Channel Station Manager – Brad Clark
Monona Terrace Director – James Hess
*Overture Center President – Tom Carto
*Police Chief – Noble Wray
*Public Health Director – Dr. Thomas Schlenker (previously Kate Vedder)
Public Works and Transportation & City Engineer- Larry Nelson
Fleet Service Superintendent – William Vanden Brook
Parks Superintendent – James Morgan
*Street Superintendent – Alan Schumacher
*Traffic Engineering and Parking Manager – David Dryer (previous Parking Manager position held by Robin Williams, position was eliminated)
*Metro Transit General Manager – Charles Camp (previously Cathrine Debo)
Water Utility Manger – David Denig Chakroff
Planning and Development Director – Mark Olinger
Planning Unit – Brad Murphy
*Housing Operations – Augustin Olvera (previously Deborah Garrett-Thomas)
*Inspection Unit (I forget the new name) – George Hank (formerly Linda Grubb)

Women in Charge of Departments and Divisions
*City Clerk – Maribeth Witzel-Behl
*Civil Rights Director – Lucia Nunez (formerly EOC – Anthony Brown/Ariel Ford and AA- Kirby Mack/Enis Ragland/Norm Davis)
Fire Chief – Debra Amesqua
Library – Barbara Dimick

Vacant Positions
City Treasurer
Economic and Community Development in the Planning and Development Department- This position will supervise some offices that previously appeared higher in the organizational chart and a few more women. Those offices include:

Community Development Block Grant Office – Hickory Hurie
Community Services Supervisor – Dorothy Conniff
*Office of Business Resources – Matthew Mikolajewski (previously Kathrine Naherny)
Senior Center Director – Christine Beatty

WOMEN AS % OF WORKFORCE
In the past few years, of the 14 positions that were hired (indicated by a *), 8 of them replaced women in higher positions in government. Even if you count the offices now under the new Economic and Development Department, there are only 6 women out of 28 positions (21%) where there formerly were 14 out of 30 positions (46%).

I didn’t look a whole lot at the 2004 Affirmative Action Report – the last one I could find, but what it did tell me was that:

In 2004, of the 2,661 permanent City employees . . . 898 (33.7 percent) were women.

This compared to the County:

In 2004, of the 2,083 permanent Dane County employees . . . 1,079 (51.8 percent) were women.

And State:

In June 2004, of the 40,475 permanent State classified employees . . . 20,703 (51.2 percent) were women.

WOMEN AND SALARIES
Additionally, I noticed when reading about the folks that get top salaries in the City of Madison, there was only two women mentioned. Top salaries were for:

Dean Brasser at $133,927
Larry Nelson at $133,463
Michael May at $125,040

Others of the 43 making over $100,000 that the article mentioned were:

• Bus drivers – John Nelson, the 18th best-paid city employee at $113,610 and Roger Waggoner No. 32 at $103,786.
• Mayor Dave Cieslewicz was 23rd on the list at $111,544.
• Other top city salaries of note include outgoing Metro general manager Catherine Debo at $117,115; embattled city water utility manager David Denig-Chakroff at $116,440 and city planning and development director Mark Olinger at $115,015.
• Interim Overture Center director Michael Goldberg, who resigned after not getting the job permanently, was paid $102,999 last year.

And this was interesting to me:

Fire chief Debra Amesqua was paid $112,673 last year but that figure was topped by three of her assistant chiefs: Michael Dirienzo ($117,340), Paul Bloom ($114,959) and James Keiken ($114,451).

As opposed to

Police chief Noble Wray was the city’s top-paid cop at $121,349 followed by assistant chiefs Randall Graber ($117,772) and Charles Cole ($114,384).

Now, to be clear, am I accusing any one individual of being sexist? NO! Do I think it is an issue that we should start paying attention to? YES!

Updates here.