Capital Area Transit System CEO Bob Mirabito could get a long-term contract and hearty raise next week—placing him among the highest-paid officials in Baton Rouge, outpacing the pay of the mayor, police chief and many others—following a vote Wednesday by a CATS committee to recommend approval of the contract.
Mirabito currently earns $147,000 a year. He was hired on an interim basis in May 2013 with an annual salary of $140,000.
As first reported by Daily Report, the three-year contract that the full CATS Board of Commissioners will take up on Tuesday would provide for an annual base salary of $175,000, plus a full benefits package and an additional $700 monthly payment to cover out-of-pocket employee expenses for employee benefits. Mirabito would also be eligible for an annual performance-based pay raise of 5%, plus the opportunity to make an additional $12,500 per year if the CATS board develops metrics for incentive performance pay and Mirabito meets the requirements, according to the contract.
For comparison, Mayor Kip Holden makes about $146,000 a year, while Police Chief Carl Dabadie is paid about $160,000.
The CATS Finance and Executive Committee voted 3-0 to support the contract, which includes a pair of two-year renewal options after the initial three years. The full CATS board will take up the contract at its meeting Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. at the offices of BREC, 6201 Florida Blvd.
This week also marked the return of the annual Trends in Real Estate seminar, which is presented annually by the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors and features an update on the state of the market, including a look at the residential, multifamily, office, industrial, retail and financial sectors.
To kick off the half-day seminar, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist and Senior Vice President Lawrence Yun delivered the keynote address, during which he said the U.S. housing and economic outlook looks bright, but that the Baton Rouge market looks even better.
Here’s a look at some of the other top stories making headlines in Daily Report this week.
- The market for office and industrial space in Baton Rouge remains strong, though growth in the office sector will likely not be as robust in 2015 as it has been the last two years. “We have a slight increase in occupancy, and rental rates are on the rise,” said Branon Pesnell of Beau Box Commercial Real Estate, who presented data on the local office market for this year’s Trends in Real Estate seminar. “We’ve seen four years of growth. It will be slightly lower this year.”
- With vacancies falling and rental rates rising, the outlook for the retail sector of the local real estate market is so strong that broker Jonathan Walker of Maestri-Murrell characterizes it as being in the “unicorn zone”—that place so rare it’s hard to believe it exists.
- While the Capital Region residential housing market continued to make steady gains in 2014 and is poised to see stable growth again this year, market conditions look less certain for the rapidly expanding apartment sector, according to local experts who provided overviews at the Trends in Real Estate seminar.
- The city-parish could save money in the development of a new criminal justice complex by adopting a public-private partnership model, whereby a private company would develop a new parish prison and lease it back to the city-parish over a 30- or 35-year period. That suggestion was among several discussed Wednesday at a forum by Harvard professor and consultant Stephen Goldsmith, who gave a presentation at City Hall.
- While McDonald’s has announced plans to increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour for the average worker at its 1,500 company-owned restaurants, the largest independent operator of McDonald’s restaurants in Louisiana hasn’t decided whether to follow suit. However, John Valluzzo—whose Baton Rouge-based Valluzzo Companies employs more than 2,300 workers at 47 restaurants in Louisiana and Mississippi—says his company already has a benefits package that exceeds that offered by corporate McDonald’s.
