What’s the going rate for an “Economic Development Consultant”?

People love to know the salaries of City of Danville employees, so I decided to find out how much Economic Development Consultant Linwood Wright was being paid…

Ex-mayor Linwood Wright is well known in the Danville Economic Development Office, but he’s not an employee there. He works on a consultant basis and I wanted to know what his contract and pay rate was.

Here’s what I asked for from the City of Danville…

1) All records of salary/payments to Linwood Wright (consultant to Economic Development), including travel and expense  reimbursements from calendar years 2011, 2012, 2013 and year-to-date 2014. Yearly summaries of payments made are quite acceptable.

2) All contracts regarding Linwood Wright’s consultancy services from calendar years 2011, 2012 & 2013.

Are you as interested as I am? Let’s take a look at the answers.

We’ll start with the contracts.

Let’s take a look at this on a Big Board.

• $64,000 for the first contract and $65,000 for the current one. At least some city “employees” got raises, eh?
• Linwood Wright is responsible for paying all of his FICA expenses like any contractor , so that’s 15.3% off the top and the rest subject to income tax.
• Look at Item #7. Although he’s got the most experience of everybody that’s left in the office, It’s sort of strange to have the language in where Wright is “to provide general direction to the affairs of the Office of Economic Development”. Now that Jeremy Stratton has left, who’s the boss?
• I notice I don’t see any confidentiality or non-compete clauses in this agreement which is strange when it comes to economic development. However, there may be some of those clauses in other documents that aren’t in the scope of my request.
• The 28-hour minimum work week language helps reinforce the “independent contractor” status as a full 40 hours aren’t mandated as would be for a regular full-time employee.
• Wright gets office space and all the goodies including a city phone, so I’m really wondering how much he would use his “home office” at his expense.

All righty then, let’s get to the checks issued…

When I grow up, I want to be just like Linwood Wright.