When the Overton Power District (OPD) Board of Trustees met yesterday at 4 p.m. they gave General Manager Mendis Cooper an $11,427 pay raise. The 6 percent increase will take his salary to $155,909 with benefits on top of that.
Cooper was appointed to his position in July 2013 after the previous general manager Delmar Lathem retired. Since then Mesquite, OPD’s biggest customer area, has suffered two major power outages; eight hours in September 2014 and the recent 17 hour outage on March 6 and 7.
Background material for the agenda item says that a committee met with the general manager and completed a performance review in January. It goes on to justify the pay increase by saying “The average compensation for general managers in the region, regardless of size, is $169,803. The average compensation for National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) General Managers/CEOs based on size is $178,200.”
The committee recommended the 6 percent increase.
Mike Young, one of Mesquite’s two representatives on the Board told the Mesquite Local News that Cooper’s pay needed to brought in line “with his contemporaries.”
In May 2014 Cooper received a $3,561 raise retroactive to January 2014 and a three-year contract effective in June 2014.
“We did use a format that uses the NRECA, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association puts out and it points out certain guidelines that you evaluate the general manager on based on how he performed in those areas,” said then-Mesquite board member James Pugh when that pay raise was awarded.
The board also approved a pay raise in May 2014 of $1 per hour for line foremen and foremen, retroactive to January 2014. Line foremen and foremen received another $1 per hour raise in July 2014 and again on Jan. 1, 2015.
Does OPD5 also publish a comparison of its customer service performance to other power companies? That should include hours of downtime, comparative rates, etc. I don’t have enough
information on Mr. Cooper’s overall management of the utility to know if he earned his
6% raise. I also don’t know if a majority of private business people in the area have received a commensurate raise during the same period. Retirees certainly have not earned that rate of return on
their CDs and other savings instruments. All of these performance and financial conditions need to be
considered when assigning pay increases to top executives in public service jobs. If OPD5 meets
these standards, Mr. Cooper deserves his raise. If not, the power district should have spent that money on some new infrastructure to help prevent future outages.
I AGREE WITH MS FAAS. I LOOK AT OUR UTILITY BILLS WITH BASE CHARGES , RIGHT-OF-WAY FEES,DEBT SERVICE CHARGES AND KNOW THE CITY HAS TROUBLE STAFFING SOME POSITIONS AS THEY CANNOT HIRE FULL TIME EMPLOYEES IN SOME POSITIONS AND I KNOW I DID NOT RECEIVE ANY COST OF LIVING INCREASE THIS YEAR.
Maybe spend some of that money for some STEEL poles on the power lines.
What a joke!
The good ol boyz do take care of there own.
So lets get this straight-
1- 3rd world service
2- outages occuring more often and longer
3- service getting worse by the year
4- costs way outa line
5- service indicitive of MR. HANEY AND GREEN ACRES!
AND THIS CLOWN GETS A RAISE?
This is really screwed up- much like mesquite- and getting worse with the hillbilly
Morrons running things- sorry hillbillys.
Anywhere else this clown would be fired for the service level and problems here in
Afghanmesquite.
Dear concerned,
OPD is a mess, but it has nothing to do with Mesquite. It’s not ours in anyway except they are the power providers. If you have a better power company, let us all know who they are.