Insist a police officer be stationed at the office 24 hours a day and keep the office open. The Police Department should be a place of refuge and a sanctuary people can go to in case of trouble. In my opinion, the response time will be severely hampered with South San Francisco dispatching and in case of an emergency the police office should be opened.
Council could give up their pay and medical benefits to hire one more police officer or bring our dispatchers back since that would be more beneficial to Pacifica. Working 10 hours a month plus some extemporaneous meetings does not constitute a full-time job. A councilmember in Pacifica should be a voluntary position. Pacifica-authorized committee members who do the majority of the work do not get paid and neither should Council during these economically troubled times. One Councilmember, Len Stone, has already given up his pay and medical benefits for the good of the city and that is appreciated. At the very least, when a Councilmember decides he or she does not have to attend council meetings for whatever reason they should not be paid. With the absentee rate of at least two of the council members we could have saved thousands already.
Budget cuts to the Fire Department have also put us at a disadvantage. A Pacifica Fire Battalion Chief has just retired and he is not going to be replaced. In addition, the two other Pacifica Battalion Chiefs will be stationed in Daly City with a 40-hour work week doing some tasks and have been told they will not respond to Pacifica calls.
I have been told that the Daly City Fire Chief already has three Deputy Chiefs stationed there as well as three other Battalion Chiefs. Now he will have nine officers, including himself, sitting at desks, and Pacifica will have no full-time Battalion Chiefs stationed in Pacifica. This mandate does not apply to Daly City; they have three other Battalion Chiefs who are stationed at Fire Stations and they work normal fire shifts.
Budget cuts have to be made but it is imperative we understand the full consequences of our actions before implementation. In these cases I don't believe the council did. I think we should review the problems the budget cuts have caused and make corrective changes where necessary.
Submitted by Bill Moore
Posted by Kathy Meeh
27 comments:
Bill missed the point. There is no real fiscal crisis. Pacifica generates plenty of revenue. The issue is over paid senior staff, department heads, fire and police. That is it, period. If the above recipients feel they are above a monetarily large downgrade in pay but percentage wise well within the contraction of revenues they know the city general fund is under. To maintain their standard of living at the fiscal expense of our reserves begs a new question. At what point does this cycle become larceny?
Todd
Your wife is a city/county/ or state employee how come you don't bitch about her salary/pension??
"Pacifica generates plenty of revenue."
since when?
"Pacifica generates plenty of revenue."
Huh ??????
Do you mean sewage assessment fees?
Welfare grants for snake bridges?
It sure ain't from capitalizing on our redevelopment zones.
"Insist a police officer be stationed at the office 24 hours a day and keep the office open. The Police Department should be a place of refuge and a sanctuary people can go to in case of trouble."
Bill, from your article, that's wisdom. So, what happens in the middle of the night if someone has a crisis and needs the physical protection of a functioning police station?
I voted no on the November Fire Tax (lessons learned from the prior 1x Fire Tax), but doubt voting for this tax would have solved either the Fire or Police service deficit. Reducing Police and Fire beyond the already skeleton levels may look okay on paper, unless you have that crisis and need one.
We'll probably be seeing the SMC Sheriff's dept soon enough. Wonder if we can get some of these dangerous service cuts reversed with them?
Several departments are getting double-digit increases in their employee benefits; Finance, Human Resources, Wastewater Treatment.
I doubt this council is even capable of looking at and understanding the budget, much less what consequences it will have for the community.
Word is that Pacifica's standing in line to "go county" with the sheriff's dept. And how much do you think the unfunded employee pension liability is currently? Take a guess.
Anon, those double-digit benefit increases are that old favorite cafeteria cash. Some peculiarity/trickery in how the funds appear as employee benefits in one budget and presto chango employee payroll expense on the next. That's the spin put on it but the bottom line is it's more money paid on top of already competetive salaries and top of the line benefits. The city nibbled away at part of this ripoff in the last round of contracts but it is still an egregious abuse of public funds. And the full implication is either not understood by council or they'd like us to believe they don't understand because until recently they were eager participants in this "feature". While fixing this little stinker the city also needs to close up the contract loopholes that would allow an employee to turn around and decide to spend cafeteria cash on duplicate benefits they do not actually need. Most employers do that by making sure their is an employee contribution required on any benefit.
Anon @ 5:37, you dreamy little misinformed scare crow. Love the misplaced self righteous indignation! Yeah!
I think we will be going to the county for lots of things including police services and i'm ok with that 100%. Some of the local officers can probably get better jobs with the county. But what is that unfund pension liability amount? Seriously has someone asked the mayor or Len Stone.
Todd, "dreamy little misinformed scare crow"? What would that look like? Coffee now!
is this the same Todd Bray who wrote his "way to go Cecilia" letter to the editor when City Attorney Cecilia Quick was the second highest paid city employee with a budget 3 times higher than any other surrounding city? When she got an 3% raise 2 years ago? He certainly sang a different tune then . . . is she guilty of larceny?
The same Todd Bray who never said a word when the Pacifica City Council made staff cutbacks and gave remaining staff pay raises:
2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
What's interesting is that departments overseen by top staffers are the biggest beneficieries of the alleged cafeteria cash payout.
Ms. Ritzma, for example, has Finance and Human Resources, and those departments received the largest percentage increases in their employee benefits. Since she is also the lead negotiator of city labor contracts, it dovetails beautifully in grabbing the largest amount of taxpayer dollars possible.
It's a system that private sector labor negotiators can only dream about.
As to the unfunded pension liability of the city workforce over the last three years, try $18 million on for size. We're done.
OMG. Pacifica has an $18 million dollar unfunded pension liability. Does the FCS task force know that? Uh, does anybody at city hall know that? Where'd you get that number? We are so screwed. And of course employee yearly incomes that will determine those pension benefits were fattened nicely by all that cafeteria cash the last few years. That's still going on. I can't wait to see the grinnin' and spinnin' on this little nugget.
How did the Pacifica Bond Sales to pay the bloated pension money out go??
Last I saw they only sold about 20% of the expected amount
Pacifica California Pension Obligation Taxable
There was an article in this weeks "The Economist" about unfunded pension liabilities. It reported that as of 2009, Los Angeles has unfunded pension obligations of $18,193 per household, while SF has unfunded pension obligations of $34,940 per household.
$18,000,000/14,000 households in Pacifica is about $1285 per household.
LA and SF have resilient economies and are not facing imminent finacial failure.
San Jose, however ...
"$18,000,000/14,000 households in Pacifica is about $1285 per household."
You're forgetting the $20.5 million obligation this council (excepting Stone) has indebted the taxpayer to with the Pension Obligation Bond issuance last year.
Besides the fact of our politicians' complete inability to see that things have changed - permanently - the irresponsibility of doing nothing is unbelievable.
And one more probable thing: The CalPers reports on pensions come out in October. It's likely that the aforementioned $18 million unfunded public employees' pension liability only applies through 2010.
So let's say that some bargaining units got cut and/or were frozen on their benefits this past year. A conservative estimate might be $4 - 5 million in added unfunded public employees pension liability through fall of 2011.
Time marches on.
At more than $250k a job, that's a good savings for Pacifica.
Anon@817am, so true. Profound changes to the economy have taken place. And here in Pacifica we are still in denial, engaging in happy talk or merrily slinging the same old mud. And at city hall they are just waiting for next year's cuts. Waiting! And then after next year, what? I hope- but I really don't expect- that someone at city hall is facing facts and trying to get in front of this continuing disaster with plans for consolidating select city services with perhaps other cities as well as the county. Why wait for total failure and chaos to address this? You know it's coming. We need to re-invent this city and city leaders need to protect our options by starting now.
All Council needs to be placed on restriction with a curfew. Also, the people who voted for them need to be held accountable. When the SHTF, they will be sent to the front line to deal with the angry mobs.
Hear hear Anon @ 1:34 am.
Probably right anon@134 but you have to remember that 'head in the sand' is the favorite official city hall stance in pathetica. Close general second would go to 'head up their butt' as with anon@710. New city logos!
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