A move by the new chairman of Coney Island’s Community Board 13 is prompting its longtime district manager to retire at the end of the year over the issue of unused vacation days — and the departure could leave the neighborhood without a replacement for much of next year.
CB13 district manager Chuck Reichenthal announced his retirement during the board’s Dec. 15 meeting, and some board members say the chairman is pushing Reichenthal out, while others contend his salary and benefits are a liability to the board.
For his part, the district manager said he doesn’t want to step down.
“I would rather not retire,” Reichenthal said. “If I stay, there’s time to fix this.”
City employees in managerial positions accrue “annual leave” and can roll unused days into the next calendar year if a supervisor signs off — otherwise, unused leave converts to sick leave, city documents show. City managers who quit their jobs with unused leave on the books are owed pay for those days, with sick-leave days worth just one third of unused annual-leave days.
Reichenthal has accrued months worth of annual leave during his 22-year tenure — though the exact numbers are unclear, according to board members. Now CB13’s new chairman Stephen “Butch” Moran, who has served in the unpaid position since July, is refusing to let Reichenthal once again roll those days over at the end of this year.
That put Reichental in a position of either retiring at year’s end and collecting the full amount he is owed, or staying on and watching two thirds of his back pay evaporate as the annual leave converts into sick days.
Now, when Reichental retires, the CB13 will have to pay him for all his unused time off, leaving no money left in the board’s budget to hire a new manager, members said.
Reichenthal made $94,993 this year, according to payroll information obtained by the Empire Center.
The board’s expense budget for fiscal year 2015 is $263,630, according to the comptroller’s office, of which $51,000 goes to rent. The city allocated the CB13 $185,180 for payroll this fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30, 2015, data shows. The board has spent $72,600 and has $92,570 remaining, according to the comptroller’s office.
The board’s exact financial situation won’t be clear until Borough Hall processes Reichenthal’s retirement papers, but CB13 stands to be without a district manager for months, Moran said.
As the lowest level of city government, a district manager’s main job is to field citizen complaints, resolving problems where possible by coordinating with city agencies. A district manager also runs the community board’s office, hires and manages office staff, and processes permits for block parties, street fairs, and other local events, as well as handling special projects such us organizing tenants and merchants associations or coordinating neighborhood cleanup programs.
Doing without a district manager would leave residents and business owners without a local liaison with city government to address problems, and slow down local administrative functions like issuing permits.
Moran is defending his budget-busting refusal to roll over Reichenthal’s leave, saying he’s just trying to keep the financial hit from getting another year worse.
“The time just keeps accruing and building up,” said Moran. “It’s not fiscally responsible to continue this.”
Critics said Reichenthal shouldn’t have saved up so many unused vacation days in the first place, but he contends the accrual and annual roll overs are common practice, since the job is so demanding that district manager can’t take days off just for the sake of keeping a low leave balance.
A Department of Administrative Services memo supports Reichenthal’s position:
“[Converting unused annual leave to sick leave] places a burden on managers to request permission to use annual leave although they know the requirements of their jobs make it inappropriate to do so,” a 1997 Personnel Services Bulletin states. “This creates the situation where a manager is expected to exercise sound judgment concerning the need to forego annual leave, but is required to request annual leave … in order to avoid having it converted to sick leave.”
Some on the board suspect that friction between the chairman and district manager is what’s really behind the move, and Reichenthal admited that his relationship with Moran has been strained.
“It’s been a long, hard road with him,” he said.
But Moran contends he’s motivated by business concerns — not personal reasons.
“I’m not pushing anybody out the door,” Moran said. “That’s definitely not true.”
Reichenthal’s exit could also signal more sweeping changes to the board’s composition.
“A couple of very important board members said if I go, they go,” said the soon-to-be-former district manager.
Reichenthal, who edited the Bay News for 10 years and worked for various cultural groups before becoming CB13’s district manager, said he has gotten some job offers but is still holding out hope that he can somehow hold on to his current gig.
“A bit of myself is in denial,” Reichenthal said. “I’m a Brooklyn guy, born and raised. I’m not giving up yet.”
