After negotiating pay concessions from most city workers, City Manager Clay Phillips has quietly given large raises to his top managers, the North County Times has learned.

The pay hikes, which went to nine employees with annual salaries of more than $100,000, ranged from 9 percent to 24.3 percent, city officials confirmed Monday.

Two City Council members and a labor union leader criticized the hikes as inappropriate, based on compensation and pension concessions that the council forced on hundreds of lower-level employees last year to help balance the city's budget for the first time in five years.

"It's like the general is sitting at the table eating a steak, while the troops sit there and starve," said Michael Garcia, president of the Escondido Police Officers Association, the labor union representing Escondido police officers.

But Mayor Sam Abed and Phillips defended the raises, saying that competitive salaries were needed to retain Escondido's top managers and that the city was still on course to have a balanced budget.

They also said that only three of the nine employees got raises larger than 9.2 percent, and that all the workers would be giving back a large chunk of their increases because of a new city policy requiring employees to pay pension contributions equivalent to 7 percent of their annual salary.

"These are overdue adjustments and I haven't seen any salary that looks out of line," Abed said, adding that many of Escondido's top managers are the lowest paid in North County at their positions. "The city manager has the discretion to do this if he can still operate the city within a balanced budget."

But Councilman Ed Gallo said the raises were poorly timed and seemed like the wrong move, based on the many concessions lower-level employees have made since city revenue plummeted along with the economy in 2008. Those concessions include furloughs and a freeze on raises awarded for years of service.

"Timing is everything, and this is not the right time," said Gallo, adding that he was caught off guard when he learned of the pay hikes on Saturday. "I understand being competitive on salaries, but this is not the right time when everybody else has been on hold for two or three years."

Most city employees took what was characterized as a 3 percent compensation cut this fiscal year ---- they got 4 percent raises in exchange for paying 7 percent toward their pensions. In contrast, upper-tier employees getting 9.2 percent hikes received a 2.2 percent compensation increase after paying their pension contributions.

"I can't support making our line-level employees sacrifice while our managers get huge raises," Councilwoman Olga Diaz said. "All employees deserve fair compensation, but nobody should get money until everybody gets money."

Gallo and Diaz also questioned where the city would find the money to cover the pay hikes, which will cost the city an estimated $209,000 per year.

"I didn't know we had hundred of thousands of dollars to spend," said Diaz, adding that the raises cost more money than the $192,000 per year it would have taken to prevent last June's closure of the East Valley library branch. "I thought we were broke."

Diaz also criticized the 24.3 percent raise Phillips gave to city personnel chief Sheryl Bennett, which increased her annual salary from $125,000 to $155,487.

Phillips said the raise was partly because Bennett's duties related to collective bargaining had expanded, and partly because Oceanside recently tried to hire her away.

"Some of the raises were based on market and competitive reasons, because there are dangers to losing certain key people," Phillips said.

Diaz disagreed, saying there's no one at City Hall who can't be replaced.

But Councilman Mike Morasco said he had no problem with the pay hikes for Bennett and other workers. He said certain employees bring crucial skills and experience to their jobs.

Phillips and Morasco also said that much of the money for raises came from the elimination of several management positions during the economic downturn.

For example, Deputy City Manager Gail Sullivan, who was paid $163,000 per year including salary and benefits, was not replaced after leaving her post.

Garcia, the police union president, said the pay hikes were evidence that the city has enough money to stop seeking concessions from labor unions. That's something that his union, which has been working under an expired contract since Dec. 31, has been arguing since last summer.

Ralph Ginese, president of a labor union representing the city's lowest paid employees, said the pay hikes for upper-tier workers had made him optimistic about future negotiations.

"It's great that the city has rebounded financially, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that it's going to slide down," he said. "But if we don't see the same kind of increases, I'm sure there will be a lot of unhappy employees."

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The speakers condemned the proposal, which would update the city's blueprint for development known as the "general plan," as something forced upon Escondido by the United Nations and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.

City officials said recommendations from that international council influenced the proposal, but that the key elements came from resident comments at public meetings and advice from a 15-member panel of local volunteers created by the City Council in 2009.

But the speakers, who made up more than half of the roughly 30 people at the forum, continued to repeat such accusations. They also interrupted city officials repeatedly, prevented city planner Jay Petrek from giving a planned presentation, and complained boisterously about the general plan proposal.

They said it was slanted toward biking and mass transit at the expense of cars, that the city shouldn't allow more housing in its urban core, and they urged city officials to reconsider a related "climate action plan" that would require developers of new projects to limit carbon emissions.

In addition, they criticized the proposal's plan to add dense development along established commercial corridors while preserving rural areas, suggesting that would eventually lead to the elimination of firefighting, sewer and other services for rural land owners.

City Council members have endorsed that approach, which some call "smart growth," and praised the proposal as a document that strikes a good balance between increasing the city's economic prosperity and preserving its rural charm.

Council members have said they plan to present the proposal to voters this November, although it's not clear whether voters will have the power to reject the entire document.

Petrek said Tuesday that proposals to change 450 acres of residential land to commercial land would be subject to voter approval because of Proposition S, a slow-growth measure approved by city voters in 1998.

But he said plans to intensify development downtown, which would include increasing the number of housing units there from 2,275 to 5,275, would not be subject to voter approval.

The speakers, some of whom were not from Escondido, were particularly critical of the plans for downtown, saying the "complete streets" goals in the plan were misguided. Complete streets calls for making streets friendly to more than just cars by adding bike paths, wide sidewalks and places to sit.

But the speakers said wide sidewalks and bike paths mean narrower streets for cars, which would increase congestion and ruin the city.

Linda Sills, one of the speakers, said the proposal would force mass transit on the public.

"This is all about total control of the population, the end of private property and the end of private transportation," she said.

Tuesday's meeting was the second of two public forums held this winter on the proposed changes to the general plan, which hasn't been updated since 1990.

The first forum, held Feb. 16, focused on whether taller buildings would block views of surrounding hills, whether downtown would become a ghetto, and which parts of the new general plan should be presented to voters for approval.

The proposal must be presented to the Planning Commission this spring and the City Council this summer before being placed on the ballot, city officials said Tuesday.

Documents associated with the proposal are available at escondido.org/general-plan-update.aspx.