Posted on 08/10/2012 8:40:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
In an effort to rein in costs, the city of Camden NJ will fire its entire 270 member police force and instead will use Camden County officers.
Mayor Dana Redd and Police Chief Scott Thomson noted that for the same price, Camden can have 400 county officers on staff. That is nearly a 50% increase in the number of officers for the same price.
Of course the unions are howling.
In these cases, the county typically hires most or all of the officers at lower wage and benefit levels, but the article only notes a very vague "some current Camden officers will get jobs on the new force."
Why Cities are Going Bankrupt
Cities should strive to provide the most services at the least cost to taxpayers. However, public unions strive to provide the fewest benefits at the most cost.
Is it any wonder cities are going bankrupt?
Police and firefighter wages and benefits are crippling cities across the nation. Mayors are often in bed with unions rather than do what is best for the city.
I am a firm believer that every city under onerous police and firefighter contracts, most likely nearly every major city (if indeed not all of them), should do the same thing Camden did.
Camden Quick Facts
A quick check of City-Data shows Camden is economically poor with an unusual spike in home prices in 2007.
Racial Makeup of Camden
Home Sales and Home Prices in Camden
Median home price in Camden has been pretty steady at about $50,000 for 5 years. On above average volume, the median price rose to $400,000 in first quarter of 2008. What's that all about?
This was just something unusual that turned up while looking up the population of Camden.
NJ was an early convert to Mexican Farm Labor, (NJ's biggest industry: Agriculture) These immigrants ... many illegal ... directly affected Negro employment in South Jersey, moving them onto welfare and into urban centers.
Camden will play out in open warfare between Blacks and Hispanics. Idyllic suburbs like Moorestown and Haddonfield? Well, they had better make pals with the unusually truculent well-armed rednecks of South Jersey exurbia and farm country, because this ain't gonna be pretty.
BTW, New Jersey South of Trenton has little in common with North Jersey Soprano-Land and except for the weird and wacky shore, speak mutually unintelligible dialects.
“a low rent Philly suburb”
Word fail, Philly is an embarrassment already.
>>On above average volume, the median price rose to $400,000 in first quarter of 2008. What’s that all about? <<
Probably didn’t happen. More than likely someone misplaced a decimal point somewhere when doing the calculations. And volume was about average for 2007-2008, but falling, and continued to fall each year.
As for Camden firing its police officers, people seem to be missing the point that what they’re really doing is replacing its own police with county police, because county police don’t have the same level of pay and benefits as their own police get.
If it were CA, I suspect this move would be reversed by a liberal judge. I suspect the same could happen in NJ.
Until public employee unions are outlawed nationally, we’ll continue to get more of the same....
Looks to me like some kind of drug deal laundering front using housing prices, perhaps... right during Fani Mae... hmm...
Didn’t like Rutgers-Camden men’s basketball team go like 0-60 over a few years.
City of Madison, which signed contracts with the various unions, is now looking to cut costs by 5%. Naturally, they’ll start by looking at eliminating positions.
And the taxpayer, who foots the bill in the end, does not have a place in the negotiations.
Public employees should not be allowed to unionize.
If you could have hooked with the city back in the mid-80s...even as a low-life clerk in the parks department...you could probably retire today with a pension of $75k a year, and full medical coverage for the rest of your life. You figure a guy is 58 years old, and probably has twenty more years of life (especially with a four-star medical program), and this adds up.
It is a total failure of the political system to grasp the ongoing cost of retirement and allow this system to get some warped up. Course, a city council person who does sixteen years on the commission...likely takes a pension at age sixty of $60k (my humble guess). If you measure up sixteen years of work and the pay-off, that’s not too bad.
Socialists use everything up and then there is nothing left but a wasteland.
Ditto that. I was there for a couple of months (in a Camden boatyard) in, oh, I think 1971. I can't anything about the good Camden of the 60's, but by '71 it was a depressing wasteland.
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