Salaries at city hall keep rising; 46 made more than 300K last year

20 Comments

1. WHAT A JOKE!

2. Their pensions are based on how much they get in salary, so these people will be pulling in comfortable incomes until the day they die — and we’ll be paying for it, even if the city goes broke. Some get CalPERs pensions and some get that plus a deferred comp package. The generosity is based on the idea that it’s hard to recruit for these jobs. I find that hard to believe.

3. What a farce, especially since so many of them do nothing but hire consultants with no local knowledge to screw up Palo Alto because they’re too lazy to get out of their offices to check on the recommendations on the few days where they actually come to work!

   6+ years of time-consuming hearings on Casti BEFORE they even addressed the key issues of who would track Casti’s “promised” Transportation Demand Management program.

   MILLIONS wasted on “retail” consultants with no local knowledge who can’t even get a response from PA’s former retailers who moved to Los Altos and Menlo Park, both of which have had SUCCESSFUL programs like First Friday and paid events to bring people downtown!

   The ONLY people apparently liking these consultants’ recommended
   Sleeping Pods are the “leaders” of the Finance Committee who think we need them more than Fire Engines while they plead poverty WHILE funding the consultants and trying to get the struggling merchants to pay $44,000,000 for new downtown sidewalks!

   PS: How much are the wasting repaving Cal Ave which doesn’t need repaving because no vehicles have used it for years and which is in GREAT shape.

   How do you like these salaries our 22% Gas Utility hikes and other non-stop utility rates are funding??

4. It’s a small city, 65k population. No police chief or fire chief should be making over $400k. Outsource the police department to the sheriff and save bunch of money.

5. Remember when low-level workers like sales clerks got promoted to management so companies could avoid paying them overtime? Now explain to me why people making $300,000++++ get paid overtime in addition to their already huge salaries and benefits.

   • The public sector has different wage-and-hour rules than the private sector.

6. Such proligate spending would bankrupt any other city

7. Their pay increases every year, way beyond the inflation rate, and nobody on council says a thing. The staff befriends the council members, fetches coffee for them and defends them from criticism. In return, council members look on the city employees as people who need protection and every benefit imaginable. Meanwhile, us residents have to pay for these salaries. No thought is given to the average resident who has to take a second or third job just to pay the property taxes that partially pay these ridiculous salaries. If a candidate who wants to put the city on an austerity diet doesn’t get elected next year, I’m moving to another state. Our property taxes are the highest, our sales taxes are the highest, our state income taxes are the highest, our gas taxes are the highest and our roads are full of potholes, fire/paramedic response is slow in south Palo Alto, our schools suck because they’re so PC, and the business climate is terrible. I can’t change it, so unless I see a glimmer of hope, I’m out of here.

8. Ask the City how many hundreds of millions of dollars of unfunded pension liabilities they have!

9. I have to laugh when articles like this are written which seem to demonize the city employees for working overtime. Look folks, overtime is generally needed when there is a shortage in staffing. If they had enough staff to get the work done, they wouldn’t be hiring workers on overtime. For police and fire, most cities have minimum daily staffing requirements. Workers get sick, injured, take vacation time, retire, resign, etc. When this happens, the city offers overtime to fill in the gap. Would you rather there just be less police officers on duty for days at a time when this occurs? What about shutting down your neighborhood fire station for a few days or weeks? Is this the level of safety you want your city to have when you need to call 9-1-1? Also please remember that while the extra overtime money is nice, it also comes at the sacrifice of being away from your family, holiday gatherings, etc. Again, please look at the reason for the overtime in the first place.

   • If city employees are working so hard, why not open up City Hall so we can see for ourselves? And if you really want to prove what you’re saying, let’s go back to time clocks where workers have to punch in and punch out to get their pay?

   • You say the article demonizes city employees who receive overtime. Where does it say that? Can you point to the paragraph where that demonization occurred? Or are you saying that the fact employees received overtime shouldn’t be reported by the news media? I think the article is very neutral and non-judgmental. You’re defensive about the subject, probably because you’re pulling down more overtime than you should be. And your statement that city employees “sacrifice … being away from your family, holiday gatherings, etc.” That only applies to police and fire, and they are handsomely compensated for working holidays. Actually, they compete to get shifts on holidays in order to spike their pensions. No, I don’t feel sorry for people who are compensated so much more than the private sector, who get lifetime guaranteed pensions and lifetime healthcare. I think you’re taking advantage of us taxpayers — and you know it.

10. @Messed up city, all that you say about taxes is true but one thing the city COULD control is the obscene constant utility rate hikes like the latest 22% natural gas hike.

    Next time you take a vacation and aren’t home, check your monthly bill and you’ll see that about 1/3 of the bill is fixed: city use taxes, utility user fees, seasonal surcharges etc etc etc and whatever else our genius staff can dream up.

    When we do conserve and expect to save some money but instead see the bill still rise, guess again because then they’ll tell us we didn’t use enough! AND they’ll continue virtue-signalling telling us to conserve and creating snail mail pieces that cost $$$$$ to mail us and highly paid staff to create!

    Does our Finance Committee or City Council ever push back? Did they ever ask why it took the City 10 years to pay us what we were owed in the Miriam Green lawsuit for stealing from us? Did they demand we get paid interest over that time? Of course not!

    It would be nice if we had a single “leader” on our side!

11. With the downtown dying, why can’t the city force the “work from home” employees to come to the office, like San Francisco and the State of California have? Those workers would spend money downtown and provide a little boost to the downtown. Given what they’re paid, they can afford to make a sacrifice. By the way, your story should note that city employees get another perk none of us get — free parking!

12. I assume Shikada and others at the top of the list are still getting two pensions … CalPERS and the city’s deferred benefit plan. How much money can these people put into their pockets without anyone stopping them?

13. They may be getting more than two pensions since most of them have worked for multiple cities and are thus collecting pensions from each one assuming they stayed the appropriate amount of time.

    In the private sector that was called double-dipping and triple dipping.

    Ed Shikada worked for at least 3 cities so he’s collecting at least 3 pensions based on his final salaries at each city.

    Remind us again how much PA’s unfunded pension liabilities are.

    • Actually that’s not how pensions work. If each city he was in was part of CalPers, it’s all rolled into one pension. So if he has 10 years in San Jose and 8 in Gilroy, he would have 18 years of service. I agree that the benefits he gets are too rich, but let’s get our facts straight before we start making accusations.

      • Thanks for the clarification.

      • San Jose, like many large cities and counties in CA, have their own defined benefit plans. The city manager will earn a pension from San Jose as well as from Calpers.

        • Not exactly Paul. Yes, San Jose operates its own retirement plan, the Federated City Employees Retirement System. However, the City of San Jose has a reciprocal agreement with CalPERS that allows employees to transfer service and benefits between the two systems. So an employee in San Jose for 10 years and Palo Alto for eight years will be able to claim 18 years of service under this agreement.

Comments are closed.