Long Beach cop compenstation's tie to similar cities muddies bu...

LB Fire employees and all other City employees are not at median, why should LBPD move to median in the current economic conditionsof the State and the City. It all about greed.
LBPD is all about to PROTECT AND SELF--SERVE. Time to contract with the LASD? Better service and lest cost.

"compenstations"?? doesn't anyone proofread or use spellcheck????

LBResident1 wrote:

LB Fire employees and all other City employees are not at median, why should LBPD move to median in the current economic conditionsof the State and the City. It all about greed.
LBPD is all about to PROTECT AND SELF--SERVE. Time to contract with the LASD? Better service and lest cost.

SO do you even know what the LASD makes. You know they make more than LBPD. Also go ahead bring them in and all the LBPD guys will get a pay raise. Plus you contract with LASD Dont count on a SWAT team not without costing double what you pay now or if they are even available, A helicopter that is also an extra Detectives Extra homicide Extra. Have you ever bought a car. Sure LASO will give you a contract for the yugo with a stick shift. Ohh wait you need SWAT and K-9 and a Helicopter ohhh sorry not in contract that will be millions upon millions extra and that is if they are not busy.

I would like to see proof that fire is not at median as my understanding is that it is in thier current contract to get median compensation.

Our cops are working with the city who mismanaged the money in the 1st place. This will be resolved and the cops will bail out City Management who really is to blame for this not the cops

Live by the sword.......

LBResident1 wrote:

LB Fire employees and all other City employees are not at median, why should LBPD move to median in the current economic conditionsof the State and the City. It all about greed.
LBPD is all about to PROTECT AND SELF--SERVE. Time to contract with the LASD? Better service and lest cost.

Why should LBPD move to median? It is very simple - there is a negotiated contract in place between the police union and the city that guarantees that police officers will be paid at the median for the 10 cities. The city made the deal and should have been prepared to honor it. If police officers forgo their median bump raises, it will be from a desire to do the right thing, even though the city isn't.

LASD can't do a better job and certainly not for less. They can't even handle the areas they have now.

I don't know why we must always balance the budget on the backs of our cops. We certainly need the cops more than we need high priced overqualified "professional" people who are hired to do lowly school teaching jobs, or "diversity experts" who are attached to every city and State Department.

Let us remember that the deficit is assumed expenditures at the margin. Perhaps some of the fat could be cut from wasteful items that are assumed to be already funded, rather than to beat on our cops again.

Projections of retirement calculations based upon 3% of yearly pay is another outrageous item, the revision of which, could not only result in the reduction of future deficit projections, but it would begin helping solve our current budgetary dilemma as well.

In order to curry favor with those with the political muscle to keep them in office, Big State and Big local politicians often increase wages and benefits so as to be in line with some other agency, especially that of Big Federal Government. Yet, the formula used to calculate Federal retirement benefits is 1.5% of the first high three 5 years, plus 1.75% of the next high three years of service up to 10 years and, plus, 2% for each year thereafter up to 41 years, 10 1/2 months, which would give an an annuity of
80% of the employee's high three earnings years.(overtime is not calculated, and doing so is preposterous in making the determination of an retirement annuity award) Were the State and Local Governments to use this formula to calculate retirement benefits, the States' catastrophic projections of future budgetary problems would be solved, assuming Sacramento does not succeed in driving all the taxpayers out of the State.

Yesterday my attention was drawn to watch an interview in progress of one of Big Obama's cabinet people. I think she was a Secretary of Health, or some such official. She stated that Big Obama's Health proposal would cost in the range of 1 Trillions $Dollars over 10 years.

Then, she justified that cost by claiming that the yearly cost would only be 100 Millions $Dollars per year.

I thought to myself that pretty well sums up the success of Government $$$ Big School $$$ in its efforts to dumb down students. If those at the highest level of Big Government don't know the difference between $Billions and $Millions, how can we expect those at the State and local levels of Big Government to know?

Ronald

LBResident1 wrote:

LB Fire employees and all other City employees are not at median, why should LBPD move to median in the current economic conditionsof the State and the City. It all about greed.
LBPD is all about to PROTECT AND SELF--SERVE. Time to contract with the LASD? Better service and lest cost.

You mention less cost. How can it be less cost if a top step sheriff deputy makes more in his/her overall compensation package than a top step Long Beach officer?

And if it less cost as you claim to go with the sheriff, I guarantee it will not be better service. The sheriff will promise Long Beach to provide police services with less deputies to save costs. Do the citizens of Long Beach want less police presence on the streets to save costs? Or do the citizens want city leaders to better manage the tax money that goes to city hall.

Essentially the sheriff is like an expensive department store where you pay more for less product. That does not seem like a good deal to me.

Wow, the sheriff idea has struck a cord with the LB cops that are commenting. Maybe the idea does have some legs. And if the Sheriff pays more, why don't LBPD officers leave for the LASD? They could move to LASD, be above median, maybe still work in LB and the City wouldn’t have to sell it soul for a greedy police force. Its all about PROTECT AND SELF SERVE.

LBResident1 wrote:

Wow, the sheriff idea has struck a cord with the LB cops that are commenting. Maybe the idea does have some legs. And if the Sheriff pays more, why don't LBPD officers leave for the LASD? They could move to LASD, be above median, maybe still work in LB and the City wouldn’t have to sell it soul for a greedy police force. Its all about PROTECT AND SELF SERVE.

Maybe you should move to a city that has LASD instead of crying about LBPD.

Long Beach has a fiscal crisis and leadership is not evident. Everything being discussed is nibbling around the edges. Police should be last in line with Fire for cuts.
Let's cut the Health Department. Would there be any extra cost to LB to use LA County (LAC already goes to the Farmers Markets).
Let's cut out top management through reorganization. I worked in businesses that hit hard times and reorg was the first thing to think about.
Outsource trash collection; it at least eliminates the future pension and health care obligations.
Then let's think about what we can do in Police and Fire. Reorganize Police into 3 divisions instead of 4? Go to three person fire trucks?
Take some real action and this budget issue can be dealt with.

I think that is an excellent idea. A lot of the officers would be able to transfer right into the sheriffs department (of course there would be a percentage that couldn't which means they would be out of a job, just like a lot of other Americans). Another benefit would be that there would not longer be the need for so many supervisors, again saving money. And did you know that the sheriffs helicopter has a base at LGB? That might mean more helicopter time in the air helping to catch bad guys.

I wonder if any one at the city is looking into this. It would be interesting to see some factual numbers, rather than officers yelling that the sky would fall, on whether or not it would save the city money in the long run. It seems to have worked for Compton.

LBResident1 wrote:

Wow, the sheriff idea has struck a cord with the LB cops that are commenting. Maybe the idea does have some legs. And if the Sheriff pays more, why don't LBPD officers leave for the LASD? They could move to LASD, be above median, maybe still work in LB and the City wouldn’t have to sell it soul for a greedy police force. Its all about PROTECT AND SELF SERVE.

The median pay requirement simply creates a round robin of raises and increases in other compensation as each of the cities involved signs a new contract with it's employees. The officers state they were told that raises would run 6 to 12 percent. When was the last time anyone in the private sector saw that kind of an increase? A comment on the article yesterday in this paper quoted salaries for the Police Department showng that hundreds of Officers earn over $100,000 a year, and many are just under that figure, at well over $90,000,not counting overtime. The simple fact is that there is only a fixed amount of dollars. The police budget being 48% of the general fund, something has to give. It seems to me that either the demands of the police union will have to be restructured, or many of our Police Officers will lose their jobs. The dollars available will be a fixed sum, not known at this moment due to the State fiasco. The real question here is just how many dues paying members does the union want to have? How concerned are they about retaining jobs, as opposed to increased compensation?

We need pension reform now. Public employees need to share the pension burden with taxpayers 50/50.

The cops need to stop suing us.

And median salary arguments are irrelevant. It's a game the unions play from city to city.

The unions need to be stopped or we will go bankrupt.

lbresident wrote:

We need pension reform now. Public employees need to share the pension burden with taxpayers 50/50.
The cops need to stop suing us.
And median salary arguments are irrelevant. It's a game the unions play from city to city.
The unions need to be stopped or we will go bankrupt.

lbresident.

I agree. Although Big Union Bosses of State and local employees portray Federal pensions as generous, and therefore they should be emulated at the State and local level - for "public consumption" -, the fact is agencies that employ Federal workers contribute only 50% toward their retirement costs.

You are also right that the cops should not need to sue taxpayers. If hard pressed overburdened taxpayers were not continually bamboozled into shoveling more and more money down the $$$ Big School $$$ rat hole, there would be more than enough money to pay our cops that to which they are entitled.

Ronald

little lulu wrote:

"compenstations"?? doesn't anyone proofread or use spellcheck????

Yeh, it was my quick trigger finger. I fixed it seconds after I OKed it. Unfortunately the first version attaches itself to the string. Sorry.

John Futch

Labor unions are an out-of-control juggernaut destroying everything in their path in a quest for more, more, and ever more.

Unlike the private sector which routinely adjusts its labor force and wage scales to match competitive and economic circumstances, unions just demand more. They care about nothing except themselves.

Unlike the private sector which has defined-contribution pensions which are flexible to match the organization's profitability, the unionized public sector all have bloated defined-benefit pensions which must be funded at a certain level, regardless of circumstances.

This is why every possible governmental service should be contracted out to the private sector.

Unions have destroyed GM and Chrysler. Now they are destroying California and the city of Long Beach. The only way to escape from the exorbitant demands of union thugs is bankruptcy.

It is a shame that Long Beach voters always elect politicians deep in the pockets of the unions like Robert Garcia, instead of honorable folks like Rick Berry, who would fight for the citizens.

Could you imagine the shame and disgrace of being a PARENT who actually voted for the Democratic Dictatorship that has destroyed Long Beach and California?????

Any citizen/voter/parent in our State must be overwhelmed with guilt for what we have done to our children's future.

We freely elected a bunch of gangsters and they drove us into permanent insolvency. No State is in nearly as dismal shape.

California made pitiful political choices whice led to a pathetic out come. Period.

This median bump was a contract issue that was signed off by the city at the time that the contract was written. The city signed off on it, and are now trying to weasel their way out of it. It is a binding contract, there is no way for them to get out of it. There will be boat loads of officers leaving at the end of this contract if there is not a median level come september.
The talk about the city going out with the LBPD and going to the sheriffs is crazy. The city will never get rid of the PD and go to the LASD. All these people that are in favor or the sheriffs comeing to LB need to understand that things will be different if they came. You will see half as many deputies throughout the city that you see now in LB.

anon 1 wrote:

This median bump was a contract issue that was signed off by the city at the time that the contract was written. The city signed off on it, and are now trying to weasel their way out of it. It is a binding contract, there is no way for them to get out of it. There will be boat loads of officers leaving at the end of this contract if there is not a median level come september.
The talk about the city going out with the LBPD and going to the sheriffs is crazy. The city will never get rid of the PD and go to the LASD. All these people that are in favor or the sheriffs comeing to LB need to understand that things will be different if they came. You will see half as many deputies throughout the city that you see now in LB.

The Sheriffs won't be as good but we voted to diminish our future. We voted for the Union haces in City Hall. No one could pretend that they thought the Lowenthals etc. would do a decent job.

They dishonor and devalue everything they touch.

I don't have any direct ties to Long Beach, so I don't really have a preference one way or another...but something folks keep saying about the possiblity of contracting with LASD......

A contract with LASD wouldn't mean LESS deputies on the streets, as they city would get exactly what they ask to pay for....and if you are eliminating all the administrative overhead, you would be spending more on the actual patrol deputies, so either more or the same number.

As for the helicopters or SWAT, last time i knew, LASD provided those services and are readily available throughout the county...just ask all the cities that already contract with Sheriff, as well as the cities with their own pd, but do not have their own swat/helicopters..and use Sheriff.

I think Long Beach needs to take a hard look at their services, and get all the facts pro and con of what contracting could do for their city and make an informed decision. But spending in a deficit is not going to work...otherwise, there will be NO city services, as it will just be bankrupt.

Good Luck Long Beach on whatever you decide.