Madera resident claim city administrators gave themselves hefty pay raises

MADERA, Calif. (KFSN) -- "I was curious as to why the City of Madera was having financial problems so I started researching the salaries," said Madera resident Michael Pistoresi.

Pistoresi says he was stunned when he found out what some of the city administrators were making.

"I found primarily in most cases the City of Madera upper administration was being paid more than their counterparts in Fresno and other cities."

He found his information on transparentcalifornia.com, the website claims it gets all its information from public records requests.

Pistoresi found that the City Administrator, David Tooley, made more than $260,000 in 2016 with benefits, his total pay was more than $337,000.

He also says the city attorney, Brent Richardson, was allegedly paid around $270,000 including benefits that same year.

"There's a lot of issues going on that when you see the number of salaries being paid, it makes you wonder what's their priority."

Action News tried to contact both the city attorney and the city manager, but neither responded.

Councilman Donald Holley says he is not sure if those salaries are accurate.

"I don't know, I haven't searched. I can't say they take that much money home," said Holley.

Holley says the city currently has about a $900,000 deficit, as far as salaries and says they are looking into the allegations, and that there's nothing to hide.

"We're not here to give people money. We're trying to kill the deficit and we're looking as a council to see if there's a way if we can cut back and that's what we're doing," said Holley.