COS Planning Director Departs, Gets Taxpayer-Funded Golden Parachute

On June 14th, we got some surprising news. Colorado Springs Planning and Neighborhood Services Director, Peter Wysocki, announced he was leaving his job after 12 years. No explanation was given for his departure in most media articles. This Gazette article, however, quotes City Council President Randy Helms saying that there had been some mistakes in Wysocki’s department and the mayor decided to go in a different direction for leadership. We filed a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) request to further check things out for our readers.

Many city leadership positions have severance packages written into their employment contracts. Was this the case with Wysocki?

Here’s Wysocki’s letter of resignation. Notice that the resignation letter was written after his departure was announced by the media.

June 24, 2024

Mayor Yemi

Jamie Fabos, Chief of Staff

Travis Easton, Deputy Chief of Staff

Mayor, Jamie and Travis:

Please accept this letter as my resignation from the position of Director of Planning and Neighborhood Services, effective July 15, 2024. I have truly enjoyed working for the City of Colorado Springs, and with our stakeholder organizations, neighborhoods and community as a whole. I will miss the excitement and the challenges of this position, and most of all, I will miss working with my colleagues and a great team! We have accomplished many transformative initiatives and projects which reflect in Colorado Springs being a benchmark organization and a world-class city. After a 30-year career in local government I will take time to reflect and look forward to next chapter of my life.

Sincerely,

Piotr R. Wysocki

Back in 2012, when Wysocki was offered his job, it included an at-will agreement. An at-will agreement is an employment agreement stating that employment is for an indefinite period of time and may be terminated either by the employer or employee. If his employment was terminated without cause, he would receive 6 months of pay upon his departure. His starting salary was $130,000 per year in 2012 and climbed to $215,750 annually by 2024 according to the documents we received.

On June 24^th, Wysocki signed a separation/severance agreement. In the agreement, the city agreed to pay Wysocki 26 weeks of severance pay and 26 weeks of COBRA (health insurance). The severance amounts to $107,875.20 and the COBRA total is $11,794.62. The generous package is costing taxpayers $119,669.82! Do you get a golden parachute like that when you lose your job? Most of us just get shown the door when we lose our jobs!

In these tough economic times, taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund severance packages. The majority of workers struggle when they lose their jobs. Public servants should be just like those of us who have to get back into the workforce immediately. Some may insist that the city government needs to offer these kinds of severance packages to attract the same kind of people found in the private market. We disagree. We should not aim to compete with the private sector. Each sector has distinct differences- pros and cons. Taxpayers should not be left on the hook for expensive severance packages.

Can you imagine how many potholes $119,669.82 would fill? The cost to fill a pothole is $60 per square yard. The funds spent on this severance package would fill 1,994 potholes. It’s a considerable amount of money.

We’re filing an additional CORA to see if severance packages have continued to be the common practice for City of Colorado Springs department heads. We’re hopeful that someone put a stop to the practice. We’ll let you know what we find out.