before they jump on any ill-conceived attempts to raise local taxes to fund the cop shop.
Police employees pay nothing toward their medical or dental.
Police employees pay only 9 percent of their pension, which amounts to 90 percent of their highest year’s salary at age 50.
In addition to workman’s comp, the city pays for “long term disability insurance.” This premium is treated as a “post tax” payment so they don’t have to pay income taxes on it.
Contracts force all “permanent and probationary employees” to “be dues paying members of CPOA or shall pay a service fee to CPOA.” Furthermore, “city agrees to deduct CPOA dues or fee from employee pay.” The Supreme Court just ruled this practice illegal for home health care workers.
For years we’ve been threatened by our own police to either pay up or be left to the wolves. Our ex-city manager Tom Lando once said, “the police department is always trying to get it’s foot in the door for more money.” I am not willing to pay more to self-interested tyrants. Like the editor says, it’s time for us to learn to take care of ourselves. Join the Chico Taxpayers Association in protesting the contracts that have brought us to the brink of bankruptcy.
Juanita Sumner, Chico
What can we do about it? We need to elect better people to city council. Scott Gruendl and Mark Sorensen have both signed the contracts that give these employees all this bling. They don’t think there’s anything wrong with the contracts. They both have similar contracts at their publicly-paid jobs. Gruendl makes over $100,000 a year at Glenn County, and I’m guessing he does not even pay the nominal 9 percent toward his benefits and pension – ask him yourself. Sorensen gets about $90,000 a year as city manager of Biggs, plus the usual benefits, and I’ll guess he’s not paying 9 percent either. Ask him.
Do me a favor, ask these jackamoes a few questions about these contracts before you give them your support.
When I was out doing some errands yesterday I saw this sign sitting in an empty lot over in South Chico. I’d heard about these signs from the gals over at Truth Matters, and I was so jealous, I wanted to get my hands on one.
I don’t know who made or distributed these signs. I’d say, if they were serious, they’d put some contact info on there. Of course, we probably wouldn’t want to spend the money to impeach a guy we could just vote out, but it’s fun to talk about stuff. Lately I do feel a groundswell of anger is about to overtake the assholes Downtown, and Gruendl is going to find himself out on his bum.
There’s a great cover story in the News and Review today about the latest budget and contracts, which are a little too little, a little too late.
At last the whole story is getting out. It’s been out before – the late Dr. Richard Ek was all over the over compensation Downtown. He wrote article after article detailing not only the crazy spending, but the really enormous problem of salaries and benefits. Now Dave Waddell, who was Ek’s successor over at Chico State journalism department, is taking it up. Michael Jones and Kelly Skelton are taking it up. At last the dirty laundry has hit the air.
I was glad to see Chris Constantin and his wife Angelique at our CTA meeting Sunday, they came early and helped Maureen Kirk and I set up chairs for Maureen’s presentation.
I had finally asked Chris, why is there such a need to waive the “sunshine” period for the cop contracts. He put it simply – because as soon as these contracts are approved the city will start saving money. Chris assured me that this new contract cuts the cops’ pay and benefits by 12 percent. He said, very emphatically, that he doesn’t want to see the old contracts go for even another two weeks.
And, I have to agree, the public has not exactly broken down the door to City Hall to comment on these contracts. Maybe I’m unaware – there’s been a blizzard of e-mails? At any rate, if you want to bitch about the contracts, you have tomorrow night, knock yourselves out.
What’s the use of sunshine if nobody’s paying attention?I’m willing to go with Constantin at his word, I hate math.
I was happy to find, when I removed the freeze cloth, my nopal cacti had grown alot. The little one at right front was a leaf that fell off. I threw it in the compost pile, and about two months later, I realized it was growing, so brought it back. The big mother plant is there in the left foreground, the original plant is hardly visible behind all the new growth.
I’ve been reading newspapers in little towns around Greater Los Angeles – Downey, Cudahy, Hawthorne – looking for their reaction on the drought. Alot of them are well-aware of their natural surroundings, one man chastising his neighbors in a letter to the editor for trying to have lush green lawns using imported water.
Here at my house, I realized a year or two ago, we needed to start getting rid of water-intensive landscaping – in our case, an acre or so of lawn between our little domicile and our tenants’ up front. So, we just stopped watering huge sections, let it go, and went about trying to find some sort of mitigation for the resulting stickers, dirt and mud.
First we laid a lot of gravel and rock. I like that, it keeps the areas directly around our houses fairly neat and easy to clean. I also like rock collecting, and we go alot of places where we find really great rocks for rock gardens. I got all kinds of cool rocks from all over California.
We also started looking for “drought tolerant” plants. I had this nopal cactus from my mom, I’d dug it out of her front yard when I sold her house, and put it in a plastic pot. There it was for years, toted from one house to another, like a mummy. Sometimes it would grow a nopalito, which would usually shrivel and fall off. Finally I decided to plant the poor old thing. I found out, there were three separate plants in the pot. I can’t get over how well they’re doing now.
I placed my mom’s old strawberry pots among the nopals last year, having had them for years and never used them for strawberries. Wow, they worked fantastic.
I took all the old “mother” plants out of my strawberry pots and replaced them with the babies they’d had, which were growing in the ground all around the pots.
I cleaned them out and added some fresh dirt and started planting the babies. They had been growing on no water in the cold cold ground, and as soon as they got into that peat moss and perlite mix I used, and I gave them a big drink of leaf tea from my rain barrel, they perked up like they’d never been anywhere else. Hello Sweetheart!
Mmmmm! That last storm left me with 55 gallons of leaf tea from my rain gutters. Wow, I got to get more of these barrels.
My husband and I bought a kit to turn these old plastic barrels into rain barrels. We bought the hardware at Home Depot, less than 10 bucks.
We cut a hole in the bottom, no rocket science required, and easy-as-pie, inserted the valve kit. Remember to put it on a raised pedestal so you can get pressure in your hose.
I was amazed, that little storm we had, I got a full 55 gallon barrel. This I will use on my container plants. Right now we’re planting seeds for our Summer garden.
Ah, here-in lies future tomato sauce.
I conserve in times of drought, and try to save some aside in times of plenty – that’s a lifestyle I was raised with. But Cal Water is using the drought to take advantage of us. Don’t be a sap, write to Anthony Rendon, Assemblymember.Rendon@asm.ca.gov Mr. Rendon sits on a committee that is participating in hearings regarding water rates. Cal Water is gouging us, and it’s not only hurting us all personally, it’s going to start hurting our economy. Between this and the upcoming garbage rate increase, we will all have less “disposable” income. That’s going to trickle up when sales taxes continue their steady dive.
Me, I’m going to buy more rain barrels, and keep writing letters. I hope you will do same.
I attended last night’s Chico City Council meeting last night, on a whim, for a short while. It’s good to make yourself physically attend one of these meetings now and then, like cod liver oil, it’s good for your constitution.
The items I was interested in had been held to the end of the agenda – the new employee contracts. The big news is, city employees are being asked to pay their full share of their pension premiums. Whoop-de-fucking-do! That’s only nine percent of the cost of pensions worth 70 – 90 percent of the highest year’s salary, available at age 50 – 60 years. Life expectancy in the United States, according to Wikipedia, is about 78 and a half. So, on average, we will pay these folks almost a full salary, for DOING NOTHING, for an average of 28 and a half years. And yeah, we pay their health benefits and their rest home insurance too.
Sure they will make new hires pay 50 percent. Another can of worms hits the floor. First of all, how would you feel toward your co-workers knowing fully well you pay 50 percent of your pension and they only pay nine? Come on – I feel that is setting up a hostile work environment, how could anybody be so stupid or insensitive to think something like this is okay? Well, I guess the same folks who think it’s okay for Todd Booth to carry a gun and represent the city of Chico, there’s your answer.
Second, this plan will only work if they fire all existing employees and hire new ones. Fat chance.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay for that issue, so I’d written an e-mail to council ahead, telling them they needed to make the contracts only good for year, and then we need a financial report about how much money was actually “saved.” I also wanted to thank Michael Jones for the wonderful chart he had made with friends, showing how out of whack our salaries are when compared with other, some of them very spendy, California towns. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my camera. He’d had a beautiful banner made, displaying it on the back of the council chamber. He’d also had postcards made up, already stamped and addressed to each council member. He was handing those out, asking people to sign and send them. He gave me a set, which I sent.
Here’s one of the postcards Michael Jones had made. Speaks for itself. Thanks Michael and Kelly!
When I see that kind of determination, I feel, well, you know:
Michael Jones has been active in Chico for a long time, he could give you a pretty good historical perspective on most of the business before council today. I remember stuff too, and it’s funny to listen to what they say now.
I sat through the annexation conversation, which was interesting because I happen to know a lot of the background on that conversation, I remember when it all happened. I’ve watched it because I’d owned rentals with septic tanks in parts of the county that Tom Lando systematically turned into “county islands” so he could annex them later. For example, at one point, the city just annexed Courtesy Motors, who wanted to expand onto their sewer. Wow, all the sudden, we were in a county pocket, boundaried by a car dealership? In a morning meeting, Lando crowed about the sales tax receipts he’d just stolen from the county!
And Colleen Jarvis was honest at the time – she let everybody know, they were annexing for the property taxes, and they wanted people on sewer to pay for an expansion at the sewer plant, as well as problems with river flow and accidental poop releases that they are still having today.
When I complained about annexation of my properties, they said, “Oh Juanita, you’re going to get all these city services, and you can vote in council elections!” Boy, talk about rainbow promises – here’s a funny example: We were living in a house on Palmetto, and the county had started a makeover that was supposed to be completed by the city, an agreement made over the annexing of the neighborhood. The county started the job, and everything went smoothly – they stripped and resurfaced it, it still looks great! But, on the day that the job was handed over to the city for completion, work came to a halt. Oh oh, we thought, our driveway was still suspended about a foot up in the air, and we’d been cutting across the neighbor’s side yard (with their permission) and exiting by way of their front yard, because it was lower than either driveway. There were three households off our driveway, we’d turned that one neighbor’s yard into a mud slick. It was the rainy season, so the mud went all over the place, all the way up our shared driveway, and out into the construction zone. It made for slippery driving, and forget pedestrian access. A week or so went by and the city just didn’t show up. One night our old neighbor lady had a stoke – and the ambulance could not figure out how to get into our driveway. It was a disaster, all of us were out there trying to get that ambulance across that mud slick, and they didn’t want to come. Finally they got the poor woman out of there, but she didn’t last very long afterward, and I can’t believe the ambulance delay helped her in any way. The next day I called the city, told them what happened – oh, many apologies – but they still didn’t send a crew until the next week.
And now I live on Filbert – we are proud of our potholes, we call them, “vernal pools.” (sarcasm alert) There’s a chronic pot hole near the corner of Filbert and Downing – about 12 years ago, it voided the warranty on my tires – excessive road hazard. They annexed our neighborhood here over five years ago, and you can still look out there and see that same pothole – I call it, “Mooooby Dick! Ye dam-ned whale!”
Oh, but you say, I can vote in city elections! Yeah, that was tasty two years ago, when we kicked the shit out of Measure J, but, over the long run, it’s been a total downer. I voted for Scott Gruendl, Mary Flynn, Tom Nickell, Mark Sorensen, Sean Morgan, Mitt Romney (?!) and some others my brain is protecting me from by forgetting. The only votes I feel good about today are the ones I threw away on Nader – thanks for that Ralph. I am starting to hate voting, I may quit altogether. That carrot has gone sour.
So, this controversy over the annexation of much of Chapmantown, one of the oldest contiguous sections of the city of Chico, has many biting heads. No, I don’t feel any better about being annexed myself. When I lived in the county, I had the sheriff and Station 42. The sheriff’s employees we encountered were great. We also got alot of support from CHP in those days – they came to help a couple of my old neighbors shut down a party house, that was a-may-zing. CHP did that, because we were in the county, now we can’t get them, they tell us to call the Chico PD. Hah!
The fine volunteers of Station 42 put out two fires in my neighborhood within minutes, saved both houses, one of was already burning on the roof. The other fire involved a car parked right next to the house, which left a huge scorch mark but never “engaged” the house. Because Station 42 is there within five minutes, we timed them. When I had an experience with the city, it was more like 10 minutes, and the house was fully engaged and ended up being a total loss. I believe if it hadn’t been for the fast actions of my neighbors, I would have lost my garage that day.
So, when Scott Gruendl protests that he has received “a lot” of comments from Chapmantown residents that they don’t want to be annexed, I say, “who could blame them.” Well, I have to think again.
I owned a house just this side of the city limit in Chapmantown. I had great sewer, great drainage, high curbs, etc. My house was protected. Blocks over, the houses sit in swamps, no sidewalks – one lady came to a meeting to describe the system of planks she has to lay out during rainy weather to get from her front door to her driveway. This also means, raw sewage floating up out of old long untended septic tanks. I’m sure, some of the septic tanks in that part of town are sub-code. And, it’s been documented – the water pipes are leaking toxins into the groundwater over there, and toxins are getting into the drinking water. This I know because friends of mine living on 20th Street received notice that drycleaning fluids had contaminated the city water, and they shouldn’t even shower in it until further notice. Last I heard, the city is making some progress on this issue – but they are waiting for lawsuits against the old businesses to play out, or for grants and funds from the feds and state. In the meantime, they’ve been deferring developer fees, that fund being bottomed out. That’s who is supposed to pay for the sewers and the plumbing for development, the developers. Instead, the city has been giving them a free ride for years, and now they want the taxpayers to foot the bill for clean-up required by poor infrastructural management.
So, yes, in this case – one of the oldest urban areas of town, not an almond orchard dotted neighborhood five miles north of town – I’m for annexation. And I think most of the residents would say so too, given the proper background info and an election to make it respectable. Instead, we get vague reports from Scott Gruendl about residents he’s talked to that don’t want to be annexed. These nameless residents who can’t seem to put comments in writing with a signature, these shadow-puppets, are saying, they like their rural charm! But no names, no phone numbers, no evidence. Just Scott Gruendl’s word. Like they’ll tell you if you try to report something – anecdotal evidence is not acceptable, let’s hear some names, let’s see some e-mails or phone memos Scott.
And excuse the ramble, but then there’s Sorensen. He says we can’t afford to annex Chapmantown? Oh, but we can annex all over North Chico, they’re just chomping at the bit to get out there where the properties are bigger and generate more taxes, but everybody is on a new septic tank, and their houses are not close enough together to warrant sidewalks, so this would be pure profit for the city. They’d be taking in all those expensive properties (prop tax and utility tax) but they wouldn’t have to offer any services. They certainly wouldn’t have to clean up the mess they’ve allowed Chapmantown to become over all these years.
Dan Nguyen-tan was one who told me my services would get better after annexation. Within a couple of years, Nguyen-tan was complaining that the annexed areas had become a drain on Chico, and – GET ALOAD OF THIS! – he and Gruendl and Dave Burkland tried to blame our burgeoning fiscal problems on the annexations! And at the meeting the other night, Ruben Martinez reminded us, our short-lived City Mangler Greg $190,000/year Jones (who retired at 70 percent of that salary having paid only 4 percent toward the pension premiums) tried to tell us that we’d annexed these areas “without any visible means of support.”
That just doesn’t add up to me. Oh sure, you annex millions in property taxes, millions more in sales tax, but the annexed neighborhoods are still looking like third world countries 10 years later? Drive that neighborhood along the freeway, behind East Avenue McDonalds. Go in the daytime, they’ve had strong-arm robberies there during the day. Look at the streets, look at the filth, and ask yourself – “am I in America?” Yeah you are, you’re in the City of Chico. Alabama? Nope, California. Tom Lando’s California. Dave Guzzetti’s California. Jane Dolan’s California.
I mention Lando because he was the puppeteer, but I also mention Guzzetti and Dolan because they’ve been the official face of efforts to stop the annexation of Chapmantown. Dolan even threatened to sue at one point. Schwab and Gruendl both brought her up, but for some reason, refused to mention her name. She was the “county supervisor from that district…”, even though, both Schwab and Gruendl, by his own admission to me, have had dinner many times with Jane and husband Bob in their home.
Oh well, enough of this. This is a ramble. I went to a meeting, so I felt the need to talk about it. Go to a meeting and tell me what you saw.
Did I say going to one of these meetings is good for your constitution? Well, it is. As soon as you get home you are going to want to take a big dump. Works better than poke berries.
It’s good to see other places and how they do things. I just visited a town that declared bankruptcy a few years ago when sued for millions by a developer in a breach of agreement over a land deal. I was surprised to find, they are still standing, but things aren’t exactly good for the little town of Mammoth Lakes.
As I recall, a major factor in that lawsuit was lack of snow for the last few years running. The town depends on tourism, mainly snow tourists, and when they don’t have snow, they don’t get tourists. Most of the people who ski Mammoth can just as easily head for Utah. Tuesday I heard a report on the local news that occupancy, over a period considered Winter vacation by rich people, was only 20 percent, down from 28 percent the same weekend a year ago. Well, I could tell you, from looking, the snow is down about 80 percent, no brainer.
So, they got a perfect lack of storm. Right in the middle of a dry spell, while they held their collective breath trying to stay within a $19 million annual budget, a disgruntled developer decided to sue. I myself would have waited til it started snowing again. Developer lost, and the town was able to divert their bankruptcy proceedings. But, they’re hardly out of the woods, and the workers I saw all acted as though they have a perpetual sword hanging over their heads. They tried to be friendly, but you could tell, it was an effort to put on a smile, not much to smile about when you can’t afford to pay your heating bill. There’s no snow, but it was still in the 30’s during the day. In a place like that, you can’t afford to have a poorly paying job.
All over California, cities and towns are suffering the effects of the Pension Storm. Hey, I been through droughts – back in the 70’s, we said, “Shower with a Friend!” This is a different kind of drought. The public workers have cleaned out the kitty with their outrageous pensions, and here we sit, being told we need to pay more taxes and accept less service in return. All for their outrageous salaries, benefits and pensions. Especially the pensions. That’s the cherry on top for me. When I realize, these people actually believe we owe them a perpetual living, I have a compulsive episode of Archie Bunker behavior. I want to say, “You are a meathead, dead from the neck up, meat… head…”
As usual, Council and Staff are holding the contract talks behind closed doors because they don’t want us to see what a pack of meatheads they are. We see the proposals but we don’t hear the conversations full of threats and rainbow promises. Let’s face it, our council members are afraid of public safety “workers”. In every election, Chico Police Officers’ Association spends the most money. Sometimes they give it directly to the candidate that mouths their line, like that idiot Sean Morgan. Other times they wage an ad campaign threatening to cut off services if they don’t get their contract demands – “The gangs are hiring…” Oh bullshit, you little pussies. I checked into that, and the gangs are not offering don and doff pay, free gym membership, fully-paid health insurance, or pension plans paid 50-100% by the taxpayers. They don’t even have a clubhouse where you can take a shower and send the bill for your hot water to the city of Chico taxpayers. Chico PD is the biggest, best paid, most ridiculously pandered to and most threatening gang in our town, and they’re a lot more exclusive than the little kids they lord over.
Then there’s the fire department. Ask a cop about that – Kirk Trostle said it – they get paid to watch tv, play video games and sleep. We pay 50-100% of their pensions, and most of their health benefits. We even pay for them to be kept in a rest home later, when their kids get sick of them.
I’ve read the new contracts, and I’m not happy about a lot of stuff, including the five year lifetime. I think they should never give more than a year at a time – we’ve been through this so many times. When we allow them to make these longer-term contracts, they end up getting in trouble almost immediately. They never seem to have any foresight, just a big foreskin pulled neatly over their heads. Mole rats.
We need to pay extra attention this election. Please come down to the library tomorrow, 1 pm, to meet a guy who wants to be your tax assessor. Stop voting blind, Mole Rat.
I will be out of town for a few days, going to Southern California to see The Folks, do a little boarding at Mammoth Snow Park. I’m sorry I won’t be here for the council meeting, but you know I wouldn’t attend one of those anyway. I sent the e-mail below to council, I wish you would do same:
Dear Council,
These contracts you are looking at tomorrow night are a good start, but should only be offered for a year. As we all know, Cal PERS demands more every year for the pensions obligation. Next year, the employees need to pay more, and the year after that – more, until they bear most of their own benefits and pensions burden and the taxpayers only a small part.
The cut for pensions should be more like, employee 90 percent, taxpayers 10 percent, stock market nothing.
Thanks, but we aren’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot – Juanita Sumner
I should have made this point – I’m not talking about new hirees, I’m talking about current employees. I think it’s absolutely despicable to make new employees pay 50 percent while the old guard sits at 8 percent. That’s Brian Nakamura and his too live crew looking out for their own shiny asses. Yeah, Chris Constantin comes off like a real nice boy, but like I’ve said before, “Carmen and the Devil, walking side by side…”
At last there are some contracts being “sunshined” on next week’s council agenda – I just gave a quick read of the confidential and fire department contratcts- it looks like the city is asking for those employees to pay their full 9 percent share of their pensions. The tentative management and police contracts are also available.
Here’s the council agenda with the links under item 6
NOTE: a person recently tried to get my contact information from the ER editor saying they wanted to discuss this piece – look for the “comment” button at the bottom of the page. If you want to be anonymous, let me know, or just use an acronym.
Right now, our city “leaders” are kicking around the city employee contracts, and as everybody knows by now, the most important of those contracts are police, fire, and management in general. These employees are not only our most highly paid, but currently pay little to nothing for their very generous benefits and pension packages. The “public safetly” employees also manage to bolster their agreed-upon salaries with 10’s of thousands in overtime. They also get some pretty ridiculous perks – for example, police officers are paid to put on and take off their uniforms, paid to shower (including the water and gas bills that put the department over budget), paid to work out at the gym, and if their hijinks get them sued, we pay their lawyer and pay them to sit in court. They get vision, dental, life insurance, rest-home insurance, etc, etc, etc. And out of their average $90,000 a year salaries (before overtime), they don’t pay squat for their pensions – 9o percent of their highest year’s salary, available at age 50.
Meanwhile, any cop will tell you, fire employees get paid to sleep, shower, sit on their X-boxes, eat, shop, whatever they want to do over their shifts. They don’t work a normal eight hour shift like private employees, they’ve manipulated a guaranteed overtime system by threatening us with “slow response times.” Sure, they’ve got that hook and ladder at the grocery store around the corner from your house, but they’re all inside the store loading up groceries they don’t pay for to eat on our dime. Sorry, but everybody knows this is true. They chase ambulances, with no recompense from the ambulance companies, who charge somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000 per mile for your patient to be transported. And then you pay for the fire department too, isn’t that funny? And you pay for their medical and legal expenses, and you pay for them to sit on their asses into perpetuity when they turn 50 years old.
So, excuse me if I feel these people need to be taken to task, I don’t care if they are insulted. It hurts my feelings when I have to pay my property taxes to foot the bill for a bunch of guys to sit around farting in front of a big screen tv.
There’s been some discussion in the letters section, I hope there will be more. Below I’ve got a few letters I’ve seen, although I’ve missed others, I wanted to get these out here, get some more conversation out of them. The ER not only dumps letters after a day or so, but the forum they run demands that you have Facebook, and isn’t available to those who don’t have an online subscription. So, here are a couple of pro-employee letters, and one from Michael Jones that I think says it very well.
Letter: Police, fire not overcompensated
Chico Enterprise-Record
POSTED: 11/30/2013 10:39:31 PM PST
One letter printed Nov. 24 (“Stone sticks up for taxpayers”) was reported that, “The average police or fireperson in Chico makes three times as much in wages and benefits as the average Chico taxpayer.”The city of Chico is currently advertising for a police patrol officer position. The listed salary range is $53,000 to $71,000. City of Chico firefighters are close to that same salary range, from $55,00 to $77,500.
Even using the higher Chico firefighter wages, a third of their listed salaries would be just over $18,000 (low) and nearly $26,000 (high).
The lowest Chico-wide mean salary (i.e., average Chico taxpayer) I’ve found online was $36,000 (“Simply Hired”) and the highest was almost $69,500 (“Salary List”).
While I recognize that the level of contractual benefits that can be earned — above and beyond the base salary — can vary significantly from one career to the next, I believe it is somewhat disingenuous to suggest that Chico police officers and firefighters are grossly overcompensated in relation to the average Chico taxpayer.
On a side note, due to the Windfall Elimination Provision, police, firefighters and public school teachers receive virtually nothing in Social Security benefits — even if those benefits were rightfully earned in work done prior to the public service employee’s pension years.
— Mark S. Gailey, Chico
I’m sorry, yes they are too! Gailey tries to play the numbers, but it’s all there. Yes, a lot of private citizens in Chico, including my family, live on less than $30,000. The average cop makes about $92,000, and many firefighters as much as double their $55 – 75,000 salaries with overtime. That’s about three times the average or “mean” income. And, we’re comparing one person’s wages to a “household” income.
He says they receive “virtually nothing” in social security – “virtually” is in the eye of the beholder. Read the contracts yourselves, you won’t believe all the perks they get. Gailey is using the facts he likes and leaving the rest out. He’s betting nobody really reads those contracts. Please do, they’re available on the city website, under Human Resources.
Now, here, Don Grant says we must not blame the employee, it’s the politicians’ fault:
Letter: Blame politicians, not employees
Chico Enterprise-Record
POSTED: 12/11/2013 09:59:37 PM PST
Read a letter the other day from a Joseph Neff concerning his ideas on public pensions. I have seen several letters targeting public pensions and workers and it seems that is a favorite target for individuals to vent toward.What almost all of these people don’t realize is the pay and pension programs for these public employees were not just handed out to them. These are all negotiated pay scales and benefit packages that elected or appointed officials have negotiated with the respective groups of employees. These are the same employees who year after year have gone without any raises and usually each year have had to give just to be able to stay employed. Most of these individuals make under $45,000 per year and still have to contribute a portion of that to their health coverage and public pension.
I would like to see Neff provide for a family of four all the necessary basics on that salary and still be able to save for retirement as he suggests. He also says that SSI will make up the rest. Who’s to say SSI will be available in the future. Invest in 401(k)? Does the crash of 2008 ring a bell?
Stop lambasting the public worker. They do a very fine job. I hope this blame game will run its course and get these sour grape people off their necks, and no I have never held a public works position. Private sector only.
— Don Grant, Oroville
Maybe Mr. Grant is talking about city of Oroville when he mentions employees who’ve gone without pay raises – not Chico or Butte County. I was just looking at the salaries for managing the county dump, and those guys have received $10 – 20,000 in raises over the last few years. City of Chico employees, especially cops and fire, have gone right along getting their scheduled raises – they just promoted a bunch of cops, and I’ve seen two now retire within a year to six months of promotion – Dye and Laver. That’s called “spiking,” and now those two will retire at 90 percent of their newly inflated salaries.
Mr. Grant seems to be trying to use the lower paid “classified staff” as shields – yes, the lower paid employees get less salary, but they also get a benefits and retirement package for which they only pay nine percent of the cost. I will leave my little violin in it’s case.
Finally Mr. Grant, I will continue to lambaste a group of people who expect to be kept like prize pigs. PAY YOUR OWN BENEFITS, SOOOOO-UUUU-IIIIIIEEE! Then I’ll stop basting you. Oh, excuse me, I guess I meant lambasting! It’s just all this pork folks, it gets me a little excited.
Finally, I’m so glad to see Michael Jones getting in there. Mr. Jones is more patient than I am, he is willing to take the conversation further without stomping on the floor until his foot gets stuck. That would be me.
Letter: Big pensions lead to big expense cuts
Chico Enterprise-Record
POSTED: 12/16/2013 09:16:55 PM PST
No one begrudges the public employee who makes $45,000 a year, and retires on less than that. But Chico firefighters on average make $80,000 a year and retire on $90,000 a year. And can retire at age 50.
That’s why the public employees over in maintenance and parks are being laid off. The City Council needs to correct this misallocation of resources. Mayor Scott Gruendl is up for re-election next November. Here’s his chance to earn it.
— Michael Jones, Chico
Yes, he’s put his finger right on it – we have a misallocation of resources. I don’t want to talk about “what people are worth.” If you want to go there, I’ll tell you what – I’m worth a lot more than that little shit, Ken Campbell. So, like I say, let’s not go there. Let’s just set a wage that’s available for performing a certain task. Let’s say if you don’t like that wage you can hit the road and give somebody else a chance. And, given a reasonable wage, we should expect our employees to take care of their own retirement and medical expenses, with some compensation for years of service, but not just a guaranteed free ride all the way through.
The real problem here is management. Our overcompensated city manager also plays double as our contract negotiator. I think I finally understand the expression, “in the catbird seat…“
There you’ll see, it looks like the latest figure for median household income has actually gone up since the last time I checked – it used to be around $38,000, now they have it listed at about $42,000. Well, whoop – eee. Above you see the “average” wage for a city of Chico worker listed at $67,645.
I know, “median,” and “average” are two different things. “Median” is funny – you stack up the numbers – which may be wildly different from each other, or may be very much the same – from most to least, and then you pick the number that is physically dead center in the middle. What does that mean? And “average” – you add up a stack of numbers, which, again, may be very similar or may be wildly different, and then you divide by the number of numbers. Again, what does that mean?
Excuse me, I don’t even want to get started on “mean.”
Anyway, when I researched this matter, I found a salary study that showed “average” and “median” salary figures for Phoenix, Arizona. These figures were within a few dollars of each other. Don’t ask me how that works. But, I’m going to assume that the figures are similar here, and I’m going to compare the “average” salary I got for public workers with the “median” salary I got for the general public. There’s a gap of about $25,000.
At this moment, I’d like to make it known to any of you city of Chico workers out there, I’m available for lunch most weekdays. I have very inexpensive tastes – I like restaurants on wheels. In fact, since you’ll be paying, I could be persuaded to come out to the Farmer’s Market some Saturday morning for a quick tamale.
Chico Taxpayers Association 