Tag Archives: CPOA

Trostle needs to GO!

21 Nov

Sent to Chico PD Chief Kirk Trostle at kirk.trostle@chicoca.g0v

Chief Trostle,

 I think you are making a mistake trying to kick Councilor Stone off the PAB.    We all know this is about Stone’s asking you police officers to pay your own benefits. 

 Boothe should be disciplined for calling a council member “an idiot” because of his stance on employee pensions and benefits.  I believe Boothe has created a “hostile work place.” In fact, from a  citizen’s point of view, you have created a “hostile environment” for all of us, refusing to pay your own benefits when our town is in this kind of situation. Then allowing your subordinate to harass an elected officer publicly? That’s really poor judgement on your part. 

 I think you should also consider stepping down. You are obviously not suited to a management position. 

 

Juanita Sumner

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Nakamura’s response to Stephanie Taber’s question about “compaction” between cop salaries. Or is it “compression” – he can’t make up his mind

2 Mar
Well, Stephanie had to resend her request once, but Brian Nakamura finally responded.  He’s done this to me – he always makes a dumb excuse why he hasn’t responded sooner. He told me he got my e-mail address wrong, and here he tells Stephanie he had a response in his drafts file. I guess he was too busy attending a ceremony for a cop killed 75 years ago, or maybe too busy driving between Chico and his home in Hemet?  Whatever – his response isn’t anything to write home to Mama about, but I’ll share it anyway.  For Stephanie’s request see

Hi Ms. Taber,

 I apologize as the email I was going to send you was still waiting in my draft box, but it was in regards to compression and my interpretation. Essentially, a compression issue occurs when a salary of a subordinate employee within a department creeps within a certain salary range of his/her immediate supervisor. In this particular case, and as you have identified, the incentive to become a manager is lessened when a subordinate’s compensation (with overtime) overlaps that of a supervisor with exempt status or fixed salary. Addressing the compression should not

 In regards to the newly created departments, those directors will be paid a salary commensurate with their span of control and duties. Their contracts will be negotiated in accordance with existing at-will employee contracts which spell out the salary and benefits available and as established in the management pay and benefits resolution(s). Severance is limited to a maximum of three months and that is still an option, not a guarantee.

To make it more clear regarding at will employee contracts I’ve provided you with a copy of a blank one for your review.

 If you have any additional questions Ms. Taber please feel free to contact me and I apologize for not getting back to you sooner.

 All the best,

 Brian

First of all, it’s not “compression,” Brian, it’s “compaction” – please get your Newspeak straight! They make up these words so we don’t understand what they’re talking about, but this guy spins it out so fast he can’t even remember what he made up. 

There he says it though, Stephanie was right. “Compression” or “compaction” – a turd by any other name still stinks. What it means – a boss is not getting paid enough more than their (oooo!) “subordinate,” and that makes the boss just plain jealous. 

In the dictionary, “subordinate” is often substituted with “inferior”.   Is that really what Nakamura thinks of our employees? Well, that’s the problem – we have two police lieutenants making a formal complaint, which is often the precursor to a LAWSUIT, over the fact that their “subordinate” sergeants get overtime, and are therefore able to extend their “subordinate” salaries up to and often well beyond that of their supervising lieutenant. In other words, the “subordinates” aren’t “subordinate” enough!

One solution to this problem, which would also solve some of our financial problems Downtown, would be to take “structured overtime” out of the cop contracts. Cops through the rank of sergeant are guaranteed overtime, which they trade back and forth among themselves in order to as much as  double their salaries. It’s pretty convoluted – they tell you they are actually required to work that 15 hours on regular pay, but they get so much beyond that 15 hours (which can be used to sleep, eat, go to a gym…) that the average officer making a base salary of $65,000 can easily boost his pay to as much as $120,000.  Look at the salary chart in the Enterprise Record and see for yourself. The police budget is over $22 million – our total city budget is about $43 million. 

Instead the cops are demanding and Nakamura is recommending a pay increase for lieutenants. He’s already recommended a $13,000 salary increase for Chief Kirk Trostle (that’s in the “reorganization” report in next week’s agenda).  The new cop contract is full of raises, can you believe that? How is this “reorganization” saving us any money?

I’ve invited Mark Sorensen to discuss this topic at a Chico Taxpayers Association meeting, but I haven’t had any response from him. I’m predicting Sorensen will rubberstamp anything Nakamura puts in front of him. This will prove to be his undoing in 2014. 


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We need to dump structural overtime and ask public safety employees to pay more of their own health and pension costs so we can hire more personnel

24 Oct

I watched the city council meeting for a while online last night and then I read the report in this morning’s ER. As usual, no mention of pension premiums or structured-in overtime.

Right now Chico police employees pay nothing toward their pensions, which will be 90 percent of their salary, available at 50 years of age. The city of Chico, and that would  be you and me, the taxpayers, pay not only the “employer  share” but the “employee share” of pension premiums for all city employees – except the fire department. They pay two percent of their premium cost, and the city picks up the other seven percent of the “employee share”, as well as the entire nine percent “employer share”.

Two questions stand begging beside the table here –

  1. why do they call them the “employer” and “employee” shares if the employer is doing all the paying?
  2. who pays the other 82 percent of the premium?

The answer to Number 1 is, we’re a pack of suckers.

The answer to Number 2 can be found in this  earlier post:

https://chicotaxpayers.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/ann-schwabs-mismanagement-21-top-paid-retired-employees-get-over-2-million-a-year-in-pension-payments-plus-benefits-and-cola/

Nobody pays that other 82 percent. It’s “outstanding.” It is waiting offshore like the fabled “perfect storm,” waiting for the lack of revenues to catch up with the overspending of same. When CalPers can’t pay those “outstanding” pensions anymore, it will fall on the cities and other public entities that agreed to these contracts to pay them. Let me show you the tidal wave we’re facing here – well, how about, just the part you can see through the windshield of George Clooney’s crappy little fishing boat. These, again, are just those 21 retirees receiving over $100,000 in pension. There are hundreds more receiving $99,000 or less, plus health benefits.

Name Employer Warrant Amount Annual
ALEXANDER, THOMAS CHICO $8,947.23 $107,366.76
BAPTISTE, ANTOINE G CHICO $10,409.65 $124,915.80
BEARDSLEY, DENNIS D CHICO $8,510.23 $102,122.76
BROWN, JOHN S CHICO $17,210.38 $206,524.56
CARRILLO, JOHN A CHICO $10,398.98 $124,787.76
DAVIS, FRED CHICO $12,467.78 $149,613.36
DUNLAP, PATRICIA CHICO $10,632.10 $127,585.20
FELL, JOHN G CHICO $9,209.35 $110,512.20
FRANK, DAVID R CHICO $14,830.05 $177,960.60
GARRISON, FRANK W CHICO $8,933.56 $107,202.72
JACK, JAMES F CHICO $9,095.09 $109,141.08
KOCH, ROBERT E CHICO $9,983.23 $119,798.76
LANDO, THOMAS J CHICO $11,236.48 $134,837.76
MCENESPY, BARBARA CHICO $12,573.40 $150,880.80
PIERCE, CYNTHIA CHICO $9,390.30 $112,683.60
ROSS, EARNEST C CHICO $9,496.60 $113,959.20
SCHOLAR, GARY P CHICO $8,755.69 $105,068.28
SELLERS, CLIFFORD R CHICO $9,511.11 $114,133.32
VONDERHAAR, JOHN F CHICO $8,488.07 $101,856.84
VORIS, TIMOTHY M CHICO $8,433.90 $101,206.80
WEBER, MICHAEL C CHICO $11,321.93 $135,863.16

Six of the above, that I know of, are either police or fire department.

The police and fire departments also manage to drive up their salaries, some of them almost DOUBLE, with overtime. It’s the classic repo-man grab – they say they need to write overtime into the budget, and the contracts guarantee officers a certain amount of overtime. They say overtime is cheaper than new hires. But then they turn around and bitch for new hires.

The police and fire departments, mostly through salaries and benefits packages, take up over 82 % of our city budget, and drive our looming pension debt.   This never came up in the budget conversation at City Hall last night. There stood the elephant in the room, crapping all over the chambers, but nobody would look him directly in the eye. 

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