A New York City Sewer Worker Made More Money Last Year Than The Mayor And Police Commissioner Combined
The highest-paid public employee in New York City was not Mayor Bill de Blasio, not the police commissioner, or the school chancellor. It was a sewer worker named Bhavesh Patel.
Patel pulled in $539,098 in total wages last year, which was actually more than the mayor and police commissioner combined. As the New York Post reported, he had to put in 1,992 hours of overtime on top of his 2,086 regular hours — a rate of close to 80 hours a week total for all 52 weeks of the year. That means he had to work nearly 16 hours every single day, all in and around the New York City sewers.
As the city’s Department of Environmental Protection noted, it’s not an easy job.
“New York’s sewers run 24 hours a day with more than 1 billion gallons of wastewater and these engineers protect public health by ensuring it all flows in the right direction,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers told the New York Post.
