In a purported attempt to save money, the North Central Solid Waste Authority’s Board of Directors didn’t offer a raise to its assistant manager Nov. 18 when it promoted her temporarily to lead the organization.
The Board spent more than an hour in closed session discussing the issue before voting to give Michele Martinez the interim manager job.
Martinez replaced former manager Joe Lewandowski, whose Almogordo-based firm Operational Consultants had a $156,000 annual contract with the Authority that ran out Oct. 31. Lewandowski said he would work for free until the end of the year to help the Authority collect money from customers with delinquent bills. Although Lewandowski has expressed interest in a consultant job having to do with the Authority’s planned construction of a new transfer station in Alcalde, he has said that’s not why he is working for free.
Martinez’s salary is $70,720. She got a raise last year — she had been making $52,000 a year — when she moved from head of the Authority’s “administration team” to assistant manager.
Martinez’s promotion was not a surprise. She said earlier this month she anticipated the Board would ask her to fill the position at the Nov. 18 meeting, and an organizational chart she distributed prior to the meeting listed her as manager. The chart, approved at the meeting by the Board, lists no assistant manager to replace Martinez.
The Board had engaged in a search for a permanent replacement for Lewandowski earlier this year, but gave that up because of the Authority’s financial problems.