Posted on 07/12/2012 7:13:50 AM PDT by Hojczyk
I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday doesn’t seem like such a good idea on Wednesday: how public worker pay and pensions doomed Stockton. http://vlt.tc/d7y
“How does a bankrupt city pay its public safety workers twice the median household income of the area’s residents? More important, why haven’t the city manager and council stopped this wage bonanza? In Stockton, California, public safety workers earn on average 126 percent of the maximum salary and at least 200 percent of the minimum wage for their respective wage categories.
The California State Controller’s Office has all the data, and it’s not pretty. Stockton’s median household income was $50,011 in 2010. In contrast, the average total wage paid to a city police worker was $93,111. For employees of the fire department, it was $110,303. Admittedly, these are dangerous professions, but surely they are not so dangerous as to require pay of double the median household income of the entire community…
Stockton, in its bankruptcy filing, admits that the city has had little-to-no success in getting the pay of its public safety workers under control, and these expenses consume about 76 percent of the general fund.” Spreadsheet of the public worker compensation is here. http://vlt.tc/d7z
(Excerpt) Read more at thetransom.org ...
Articles...
http://blogs.reuters.com/muniland/2012/07/11/did-the-police-and-fire-departments-sink-stockton/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgUldNJ-sOg_dFNRcVVaUVJPa2NFOHNBNzh4SUVXd1E#gid=0
It is my understanding that construction work is more dangerous that either police of firemen. Does anyone know if this statistic is still true. Yet we always hear about the dangerous work of police and firemen.
If Stockton, or any city, was rated as the safest place for people to live, it wouldn’t bother me if the police were the highest payed in the country. But Stockton? One of highest crime rates in the state. What are people getting for their money?
Are fire fighters and police really that dangerous...
US Workplace Fatalities 2010
#1 COMMERCIAL FISHING:
116 Deaths per 100,000 in 2010;
#2 through #10 Most Dangerous for 2010
.
Job Title and Number of Deaths per 100,000 People Employed
.
2. Loggers and related job titles: 91.9/100,000 — Same place rank as 2008.
.
3. Aircraft Pilots and Flight Engineers: 70.6 per 100,000 — Up from #6 in 2008.
.
4. Farmers and Ranchers: 41.4 per 100,000 — Same place rank as 2008.
.
5. Mining Machine Operators: 38.7 per 100,000 — Up from #8 in 2008. See: The Millfield Mining Disaster.
.
6. Roofers: 32.4 per 100,000 — Up from #7 in 2008, becoming more deadly.
.
7. Refuse and Recyclable Materials Collectors: 29.8 per 100,000 — Down from #5 in 2008
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8. Driver/Sales Workers and Truck Drivers: 21.8 per 100,000 — Up from #17 in 2008.
9. Industrial Machinery Installation, Repair and Maintenance Workers: 20.3 per 100,000
10. Police and Sheriff’s Officers: 18.0 per 100,000 — Up from #12 in 2008.
The city has had little-to-no success in getting the pay of its public safety workers under control.
The idiot safety workers demands will put them out of work or set a small pay day.
Hacks now feel the pain of alowing contracts for votes,you get what you allow.
how much were they spending on welfare and ‘the arts’?
Wonder where drug dealers rate on that scale.
I am familiar with the Line of Duty Death information for Firefighters. The number has settled near or under 100. YOu can goggle LODD and find the information for LE and FF
I don't know how accurate the data is, but according to this site:
http://www.odmp.org/agency/3723-stockton-police-department-california
...the City of Stockton PD has had 10 fatalities...since 1854.
Another dangerous profession is fisherman...especially in arctic waters. I guess some see the difference between police and other more dangerous occupations is the level of personal interaction between the police and individuals.
The biggest difference contributing to bankrupty IMO is pension issues. I don’t know of a construction worker who has a 20 or 25 year career and out on pension system albeit being a police official is not as dangerous as some others.
Talk about a group of people that do not get paid enough...
Nope. The citizens are to blame. We have a representative democracy. If those dipsticks in Stockton want to fix this, they need to quit electing free-spending Democrats.
Everybody likes the Democrat’s free pony rides until somebody has to pay for the feed and clean up the horse crap.
Around here, every year when the FBI releases its crime stats for the previous year, our local police chief is like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. He pops his head out of a hole, looks around and if the local crime rates went down, it was due to his, "aggressive new police initiatives, the quality of the officers and proactive law enforcement." If on the other hand, the stats go up, it was no doubt, a "reflection of changing socio-economic conditions," or possibly, "budget cuts."
Problem is, it's in California; who is doing everything it can to hurt businesses. Plus it's the Central Valley. Great weather, I lived there 21 years; but the CV does not attract outside wealth like Malibu or Sausilito
Now they have to pay the bond, and no cash flow to pay for it.
Watch who you vote for, I tell my liberal friends in CA.
Lumberjack and deep sea fishing are the big two. Fireman is fairly dangerous, like construction, in the top ten.
Police is 27th most dangerous, just below landscape gardeners.
About 90% of firemen never go to a fire but they are damn good domino and card players. Most also have second jobs for their many days off.
Most policemen are never in harms way, either.
I agree.. the problem also lies in the fact that this 40 to 43% voting block of gov workers, including state, and local, is very much inclined to vote.
can you just imagine if the dems in the federal gov had their way and had over 50% of the general population working for the state in one or another?
good lord it would be all over... which I kind of think it is anyway..
‘It is my understanding that construction work is more dangerous that either police of firemen. Does anyone know if this statistic is still true. Yet we always hear about the dangerous work of police and firemen.’
There are hundreds of thousands of us who work in the power and semiconductor businesses where plant buildings have the highest ratings for chemical, fire, and health hazards. There have been deaths by electrocution. Folks have died by entering closed spaces which have filled with pure nitrogen.
I worked on the third floor of a building whose second floor contained all high voltage electrical transformers and piping for silane gas, phosphorous, arsenic, boron, chlorine, and many others. We all took a risk by going to work every day.
However, our safety record improved continuously and not at the expense of freedoms. Good engineering design and training eliminated hazards.
I think lack of training and procedures which give these city workers an easy way out is part of the problem.
We didn’t get any higher pay for working in these places. No such thing as hazard or combat pay.
We also had our own hazmat and security. They were better qualified to work in these buildings because they had the training, knowledge of the hazards, and were local and responded ASAP. They were our coworkers who were cross-trained.
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