Town of Seymour, but not schools, reports salary data

SEYMOUR — Police officers were seven of Seymour’s top 10 highest paid employees on the town side of the budget last year.

The information comes from a response to a Freedom of Information request filed by The Connecticut Post for a list of public employees and how much they were paid in 2020.

However, the numbers do not include compensation paid by the Board of Education, which the town says it does not have access to.

Wages paid by the Board of Education — which totaled $ 22,074,864 in the current year’s budget — account for 38 cents of every dollar spent by the town.

And the school district’s top two employees, Superintendent Michael Wilson and Assistant Superintendent Vonda Tencza, who were paid $ 189,520 and $ 168,045 respectively in 2019- 20, are probably among the town’s highest paid employees. School administrators dominated a list of the town’s highest paid employees in 2019.

But Wilson did not supply a list of the school district’s employees and what they were paid in the 2020 calendar year.

Instead, in response to a Freedom of Information request, he sent a reporter a link to a 28- page PDF that contained salary data from the 2019- 20 budget.

Asked for more recent data, Wilson said Tuesday school officials were working on uploading budget documents to the school district’s website, “but the specific salary pages still have to be uploaded and that should be done by the end of the week at the latest.”

As of Friday afternoon, no new information had been posted.

The school district’s response to inquiries about how public money is spent contrasted sharply with that of town officials.

The Connecticut Post emailed an FOI request Jan. 28 to First Selectwoman Annmarie Drugonis seeking “information on all salaries paid by the town of Seymour in calendar year 2020, showing the name, title and department of each employee, base salary, overtime pay, retroactive and extra- duty pay.”

Within 10 minutes, Deirdre Caruso, manager of operations and grants at Town Hall, responded to say officials would work on the request.

Human Resources Director Chris Pelosi emailed a spreadsheet with all the requested data Feb. 5.

But it only included numbers for the 92 employees on the town operations side of the budget.

Asked if he could send school district data too, Pelosi said he could not.

“You will need to submit a separate request to the Board of Education,” he said. “I do not have access to the Board of Education salary data.”

Topping the list on the town side is Douglas Thomas, the town’s finance director, who took home $ 128,905.92 last year.

The next seven highest paid employees were are all police officers, many of whom had their base pay increased by overtime and “extra duty” work on utility and construction sites that the town is in turn reimbursed for.

For example, the highest paid cop last year was Thomas Scharf, a commander, who received $ 127,471.02 — $ 87,297.60 in base pay, $ 7,762.73 in overtime and $ 32,410.69 in extra duty.

Closing out the list of the Top 10 on the town side of the budget were two noncops: Public Works Director Anthony Deprimo and Operations Director Anthony Caserta, who were paid $ 106,132.04 and $ 102,986.00, respectively.