Settle This Argument: Who's the Most Overpaid City of Dallas Employee?

By Robert Wilonsky Fri., Apr. 23 2010 at 11:45 AM

Categories: City Hall

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Justin Terveen

Merten just got around to looking at Texas Tribune's list of city of Dallas employees' salaries. He called me, shocked -- SHOCKED -- at some of those numbers. He also wanted to know who the who is Harold Nogle, the fourth-highest paid city employee at $208,000 -- which puts him between Park and Rec head Paul Dyer ($210,493) and First Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans ($204,117).

According to TT's database, Nogle's department is listed as "temporary help"; his title, "human resources." I've asked Frank Librio for more details. He'd never heard of Nogle and is asking, well, human resources. Says maybe he's contract labor?

Here's some background, though: According to this 2001 story ("Big D, Little IT"), Nogle is -- or at least was -- the only man left in the entire universe who knows how to operate LINC, referred to as "the city of Dallas's antique, home-grown operating system." Said one city higher-up at the time, "If he gets killed on an elevator, we're screwed."

According to a May 2009 city audit, it looks like that's still the case: "There are applications critical to the City that are still dependent on the LINC operating system."

Update: Thanks to the Friend of Unfair Park who points out in the comments that Nogle is a clarinetist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Has been since 1962. It's official: cover story. Mine, all mine.

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religion of bacon says: ...... if only so that we can see what this overpaid geek and his mainframe look like. ====================================== You are just jealous because he has had a long and productive career, not a series of false starts and failures like yourself.
RoB -- I hope you re right but I would not put it past Dallas to be on 12-bit systems!
Tim, you're absolutely right -- just a slip of the fingers, which are awful tired today. I know very well who Ryan is -- the guy at City Hall who loves taking my phone calls about Bama Pie. I've fixed.
I stand corrected -- Kalman Cherry did retire after the 2008-2009 season.
For the record, Ryan Evans is the First Assistant City MANAGER, not attorney. He brought the new police headquarters building in on time and under budget.
Is Mayor Leppert on the list? He's cerainly overpaid at ANY figure.
I thought Kalman Cherry retired.
Heywood, no way. I think it's more likely this LINC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC_4GL
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC So we have to have a modern hotel, an updated Cotton Bowl, an American Airlines center, parks over freeways but the city will run vital parts of its infrastructure on a 50 year old computer. This borders on insanity if it were not so criminally negligent.
Old story amongst us old electricians;Small town had been powered by automated power plant for years. Town goes dark one day. They locate the only elec. eng. left who had actually worked in the plant. He, the mayor, and all the towns bigwigs go out to the plant. He wanders around a bit, then reaches up and smacks on a pipe with a big wrench. Town is back on line. Town recieves bill next day for $10,002.00. Mayor is pi$$ed, asks engineer to justify outragous price. Engineer says; "Well, 2 bucks of that for me smackin' that pipe, an' the rest is for me knowin' which pipe to smack." It pays to be irreplacable.
The harsh reality is that they can go out and buy Microsoft: City off the shelf for $250 per user/seat, just like every other municipality in the free world.
Too bad the database includes only base salary and not W-2 income (which would include overtime). There are some very interesting results when you look at overtime-- particularly in DPD. Last I checked you had some beat officers consistently making around $100,000 / year--- typical police department "best practices" prohibit this sort of thing. What you end up getting are certain cops who "game" the system by intentionally arresting large #'s of people (especially towards the ends of their shifts) to drive large amounts of overtime (they have to stay late to write their reports, do jail transport, etc.--- then they get paid to show up in court, etc.
Between the way Jaap rehearses the DSO and now this inquisition by the DO, I hope Harold doesn't have a heart condition...
Sure enough, Nogle has been with the DSO since 1962. That's almost as long as Kalman Cherry. http://www.dalsym.com/Bio.aspx?bID=77
@ROB WORD!
Funny stuff. I know Harold Nogle. Was actually the best man at his sons wedding. He was (not sure if he still is) a clarinetest for the DSO.
I found Nogle's number at City Hall. Got a generic female pre-recorded outgoing voice mail message. Asked him to call me. I'd like to see his vacuum tubes.
Note to fellow geeks: Harold Nogle's salary is an example of why you should never, ever put comments in your code. /
So, in the 8.5 years since the linked article, what have they done? Any success in migrating off this archaic system, or does the entire city still hinge on the health of a 68 year old software developer? If I were him, I'd be one of the highest paid guys too--and riding around City Hall in a palanquin.
RoB, Sam and I were just about to wrestle over The Harold Nogle Story.
So Nogle is the only person who knows where the spare vacuum tubes for the city's mainframe are stored? He's the only one who the hamsters who power the servers take orders from? Seriously, this sounds like what Y2K was supposed to be, waiting to happen. The salary is shocking, but the potential for a city-wide trainwreck is horrifying. You guys need to do a cover story on this atavistic clusterf*ck, if only so that we can see what this overpaid geek and his mainframe look like.