HAMMOND | Outgoing City Controller Barbara Cardwell has been awarded a consulting contract to provide financial services after her retirement at the end of the year.
Beginning Jan. 1, Cardwell will be paid a consulting fee of $90 an hour, with a cap of $40,000 through 2009.
The Board of Public Works and Safety approved the contract at its meeting Dec. 4 and said Cardwell will be assisting incoming City Controller Robert Lendi.
Lendi left his position as the city's economic development director to begin working full time in the controller's office Oct. 1. Cardwell said Lendi currently is being paid out of the controller's salary fund.
When he replaces Cardwell in January, Lendi will be among the city's highest paid administrators, earning a base of $63,352 with an additional $6,109 paid from the Water Department and $5,516 from the Sanitary District.
Lendi also will replace Cardwell as a member of the Board of Public Works and Safety, which pays no salary.
According to Cardwell's contract, she will help the city with public finance issues including tax increment financing, sales tax increment financing, related bond issues and other projects as directed by the mayor or the controller. Other duties may include financial and management evaluations and general municipal financial consulting such as capital project financing and special purpose financing.
The duties are similar to those once performed by financial consultant Ed Krusa, now head of the city's Water Department. Krusa's contract was capped at $60,000, though he averaged more than $80,000 a year from 2004 through 2006.
Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. and Marty Wielgos, his chief of staff, last week did not return calls for comment on the transition in the controller's office.
Council President Dan Repay said the council played no role in the Cardwell contract, though the council did award some departments an amount for contractual services that could be used to rehire employees who were bought out or had their positions eliminated.
Repay said the council's focus was on employees, such as public defenders, who were not working full time but receiving benefits. They included the council's own attorney, Robert Berger, who might be offered a contract next year on a reduced basis from this year's salary.
"We haven't signed any contracts as yet," Repay said.
The position of attorney John Stanish, who represents City Clerk Robert Golec, also was eliminated in a rash of eleventh hour amendments approved the night the council passed next year's budget.
"I didn't know about it until it happened," Golec said. "The idea was to hire them back at less money."
Golec said Stanish had been making about $19,000, but the council awarded Golec only $15,425 for contractual services.
