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 –
- why do they call them the “employer” and “employee” shares if the employer is doing all the paying?
- 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:
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.
Chico Taxpayers Association 