Last week’s Glendale city council meeting featured city employees’ appeals to unswayed officials, faced with the choice of reducing employees’ compensation or cutting funds for public services.
Employees’ union president Craig Hinkley: “I hope the state passes a law that says that every upper level manager and their staff has to resign for one day, and take that Second Tier, because if its good enough for the workers in your city who deliver the services to your citizens, it ought to be good enough for them.”
Comments from City Manager Jim Starbird: “We need to address the pension issue from a structural standpoint…It is going to be too costly and we can’t support those costs given our revenue structure. We are looking forward this year to a 4 to 5 percent increase in both our safety and nonsafety retirement costs, a $4-$5 million cost in our general fund.”
City council member Laura Friedman: “As much as you all deserve the pensions you get, the public pension system was never set up to create a different class of residents than the people the public sector serves…We are doing the best we can to preserve what you have, but we can’t do it at the expense of the residents you serve, and that’s the position we’re in right now.”
Speakers, city staff, and city council comments can be viewed on the video archive (begin at 2 hours, 10 minutes).
Every taxpaying citizen, including the hard-working employees of the city of Glendale, should enjoy retirement security and health care that doesn’t deplete their savings, but the politicians who guaranteed these benefits to public sector workers got things backwards. Taxpayers should be first in line to receive services and benefits, and shouldn’t foot the bill for benefits they can’t receive themselves.
More on public sector benefits and pensions under the Sunroom Desk Paperweight:
Employees’ contract looks like a fair shake, Glendale News-Press, Saturday, November 6, 2010
Tough Fiscal Problems Loom for Cities: Soaring Pension Costs Start Eating Into Budgets as Payout Increases for Public-Safety Workers Kick In, Wall Street Journal, Thursday, November 4, 2010
Riverside County-backed pension measure in line for win, Press-Enterprise, Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Trouble with Public Sector Unions, National Affairs, Fall 2010
Pension Tsumani – daily links to articles and posts on “the approaching wave of pension debt”
Pingback: Pension Costs, Water Rates, Smart Meters in Glendale, California | Sunroom Desk