Posted on 03/26/2011 8:19:48 AM PDT by smokingfrog
A southern California city in an uproar after nearly half the workforce received layoff notices last week, including one who jumped to his death, has hired a spokesman for $3,000 a week.
Costa Mesa, an Orange County city, retained former Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Lobdell, who previously worked as an editor of the local Daily Pilot.
Mayor Gary Monahan told the Orange County Register that he made the hire because the city's website and ability to interact with residents are "incredibly bad shape," and its "entire communications system is just poor."
Lobdell, who will become the city's first formal spokesman in recent memory, told the newspaper he signed a 90-day contract that pays $75 an hour for up to 40 hours a week. His new job doesn't include perks or benefits.
Lobdell's pay is comparable to that of his counterparts in nearby towns where spokesmen also have health benefits and pensions, the newspaper noted.
"The idea behind it was (that) at least a part of Costa Mesa's problems have been created by lack of communication," Lobdell told the newspaper.
The deal comes as the city considers outsourcing hundreds of jobs. A maintenance worker, 29-year-old Huy Pham, plunged from the roof of the five-story Civic Center last week about an hour after he was called in to work to receive his pink slip. He was one of 213 city employees who were to be notified of layoffs that day.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Three thousand bucks a week just to flap your lips and pee on people’s legs. I wonder why I never could find a job like that.
Another way to look at this is the city is saving $15,000,000 by laying off 213 workers and plans to spend up to $39,000 to communicate better.
Doesn’t sound so bad that way. The numbers make sense.
Then the second story, a person committing suicide means what?
Don’t have layoffs because someone may be suicidal?
I can’t take this stuff seriously.
Left out blowing smoke up their ass, must have congressional experience.
I don’t care if he makes $10,000 a week as long as it comes from private industry who think he’s worth it. Not PUBLIC!
There are many who would apply your comments to what Rush Limbaugh does, although they’d have to add quite a few zeros to the weekly rate.
This is America, a (barely ) free nation that is (was) based on capitalism. Everyone should be encouraged to makes as much or as little money as they wish.
But the taxpayers should be at the doors of city hall with torches and pitchforks demanding an explanation from their elected officials as to why they thought this was a justifiable expenditure of taxpayers money.
That’s what I charge for programming/development/design work. Not that I get it all the time. ;-)
Must have own knee pads.
It’s not that hard to communicate bad news. What’s hard is twisting it so the person getting the news is foggy about what they are being told. It’s one of those, “Good morning (sir or mam), it’s so good to see you here in the office. We have some news to share with you and in order to meet with employee option guidelines, would you rather be impacted with a kinetic projectile or obtain full torso larnyx traction?”
Credit crunch banker leaps to his death in front of express train Kirk Stephenson 9/27/08
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, Access International, CEO and Co-Founder, 12/23/08
Adolf Merckle, multiple companies, Industrialist, 1/6/09
Steven Good, Sheldon Good & Co., CEO and Founder, 1/7/09
Tom Riffe, Highlands Union Bank, CEO, 1/9/09
Patrick Rocca, Accorp Properties, 1/19/09
Lupoe family (all 6), Kaiser Permanente (unemployed), 1/27/09
David Kellermann, acting head of Freddie Mac, 4/22/09
William Parente Family (4), Lawyer, 4/22/09
Carlene Balderrama, wife and mother, 7/23/09
Amazing how seldom these get reported...
Forget it, Jake; it’s California.
They should have hired a used car salesman they would get the same result at a lower cost.
Yeah, I know, I was looking at that and thinking the same thing. That $3,000-per-week figure entails zero benefits, no pensions, no vacation pay, no sick days, no withholding, etc. etc., so compared to a regular employee in the city, it's more like the equivalent of maybe $1,800 a week. People look at the hourly rate I charge as self-employed and say, "Wow!" but they rarely stop to think (including some of my clients, which is frustrating) that a charge of $75/hr self-employed is what it takes to reap the equivalent of a salaried person whose hourly pay is maybe a little more than half that.
It's a 90-day contract, so at max the guy stands to make $36,000 for, it sounds to me, like revamping the website and clearing up a bunch of other communications problems. Once he's done, he's done -- the city isn't paying any pensions or withholding or payroll (if cities do those things!) -- the point being, that it's way cheaper for the city to do it this way than to hire a permanent staff person to do it.
I think it reflects poorly on the journalistic professionalism of the guy that the city is hiring a reporter to do their PR, but other than that, sounds like Costa Mesa is more on the way to saving money than wasting it.
They are sacking half the workforce and their websites and communications capabilities are in bad shape? What were all those sackees doing all day long? Painting their nails and toes? Watching porn on city computers? Surfing? Put this one in the “beyond weird” category.
$3,000 per week? I’ll take it!
Wow. That’s better than Amway!
Ya see the leftist big government union criminals are just pissed off because this California city, fired *half* their government employees.
We're talking about a city of about 450, that fired approximately 250 employees.
But feel free to stand on the side lines barking about how bad this California city is...
If they want to hire a professional mouth to explain this to people like you, no problemo.
Ya see the leftist big government union criminals are just pissed off because this California city, fired *half* their government employees.
We're talking about a city of about 450, that fired approximately 250 employees.
But feel free to stand on the side lines barking about how bad this California city is...
Yes, I fully agree with their cutting of a couple hundred positions. But I would think that some of those positions eliminated were likely more useful to the community than an overpaid mouth puppet. This city can do all the want to, I don’t really care. But I have no problem commenting on their situation.
I read up to 90 days which is approx 13 weeks, times 3K is $39,000.
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