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This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
This is one of the items on that ballot prop that has to be met for the tax to kick in: "8. Establish a pension plan with reduced benefits for new firefighters." Can JW (or anybody else) please explain why this is only for new employees? This subject drives me batty. Why in the world would you create a two-tiered system? Simply decrease the benefits uniformly for ALL firefighters going forward. This should be trivial to do, but they don't seem capable of doing it. I understand perfectly that you cannot roll back benefits that have been granted, so that if you have worked the last 15 years with a pension multiplier of 3%, then you are entitled to that 45% pension, whether I like it or not. Why can't you now change the multiplier to 2.5% going forward? Nothing has changed regarding the pension for existing or past employees. All that has changed is future pension contributions, and if you don't like them, then you can quit with exactly what you have currently accrued. Likewise the retirement age should be raised. You would be able to draw your currently accrued pension at your currently specified retirement age, but anything you accrue from this point forward wouldn't kick until you reached the new retirement age. That should be applied to all safety and non-safety city workers, and the pension problem becomes manageable. JW, please explain why this is not completely equitable.— August 4, 2010 4:43 p.m.
Philadelphia Finds DROP a Big Drain
Sp said: "Here, I have an idea, why don't we give Anthony Webb-lead author of the Boston College study- a call" ========================================================== What a ridiculous suggestion. Why get for free what we could pay $20 million for? We should give Kroll a call and have Arthur Levitt perform a "proper" study of the DROP program. It's the only legitimate way to find out what Aguirre (oops, I mean Anthony Webb) has already discovered. ;)— August 4, 2010 11:47 a.m.
Runners' Velocity with Earth Spin, Wood Rings
RefrideGringo said: "The planet Earth indeed rotates counter clock-wise" Not according to the Australian I work with!— August 4, 2010 11:39 a.m.
This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
JW said: "Paul I'll ask you the same question that Don and Surfpuppy ignored. What do you believe is fair salary, not benefits, for a journeyman police officer?" I'll answer as I have before. I care much less how much officers are paid as I do what percentage of the budget is spent on safety personnel and that the total cost of the compensation (salary, benefits and pension obligations) are paid out of the current budget on a yearly basis. If you want higher pay then you can do one of two things: Reduce the number of officers or increase revenue. What has pissed everybody off is that you didn't do either, and now you want revenues raised in the future to pay for the past. That should never be acceptable.— August 4, 2010 11:07 a.m.
This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
Jw quoted: "It shows that 88 officers died in the line of duty between Jan. 1 and June 30. That's compared with 61 officers during the first six months of last year." ... I believe this information is more accurate than the other posted. ============================================== Gee, I wonder why, JW. Maybe because of this? "The number of law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2009 was the lowest in 50 years" http://govpro.com/public_safety/law/police-deaths… The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund is being just a tad disingenuous, eh? law enforcement deaths (traffic accidents) 2009 120 2008 145 (73) 2007 169 (84) 2006 131 (68) 2005 143 (60) 2004 136 (74) 2003 153 (83)— August 4, 2010 10:55 a.m.
This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
To add: I was a little generous above. Police fatalities are actually closer to 14 per 100,000 (not 21), roughly 3 times the national average. Of those, roughly half are traffic accident related. From 1992 through 2006, police were pretty steady at the number 14 most dangerous profession, trailing taxi drivers and construction laborers. Also please note that the police fatality risk is well below that of refuse workers. Annual fatality rates for fire fighters between 2001 and 2006 were even lower than police. Various fire agencies ran from 5.0 to 14.1 deaths per 100,000. It looks like instead of privatizing the Miramar landfill and charging for trash pickup to pay for police and fire pay and bennies, we should be cutting police and fire pay to bump up the compensation for our city employees with the highest risk jobs, our refuse workers. JW, don't get me wrong, I have great respect and appreciation for what our police and firefighters do, but you need a little perspective on exactly what the job is worth.— August 3, 2010 11:50 p.m.
This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
Response to #98: JW said: "But lets see, how many time while you were engineering in your air conditioned office did you ..." ====================================================== JW, while you are patting yourself on the back and justifying why you deserve your pay and bennies, consider the following list (along with ages) and note who is NOT on it. List is from the BLS for 2005: According to BLS data, the following jobs had some of the highest fatality rates for 2005: Fishers and related fishing workers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 118.4 Average salary: $29,000 per year Logging workers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 92.9 Average salary: $31,290 per year Aircraft pilots and flight engineers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 66.9 Average salary: $135,040 Structural iron and steel workers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 55.6 Average salary: $43,540 Refuse and recyclable material collectors Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 43.8 Average salary: $30,160 Farmers and ranchers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 41.1 Average salary: $39,720 Electrical power-line installers and repairers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 32.7 Average salary: $49,200 Truck drivers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 29.1 Average salary: $35,460 (for heavy or tractor-trailer drivers) Miscellaneous agricultural workers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 23.2 Average salary: $24,140 Construction laborers Fatality rate (per 100,000 workers): 22.7 Average salary: $29,050 Police was shortly after construction workers at roughly 21. The majority of police deaths were traffic accidents from being on the road a lot (like a taxi driver or a truck driver), not from chasing gang-bangers.— August 3, 2010 11:33 p.m.
This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
Don said: "One of the classic double dippers is Mayor Sanders." I believe Sanders also retired before 50 with a full chiefs pension, and if I remember correctly he then was pulling down $200K per year on top of his pension for his "charitable" work for the United Way and then the Red Cross.— August 3, 2010 6:23 p.m.
This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
JW said: "Don you really want 60 year safety employees? .... " First, there are plenty of things that an experienced 58 year old officer or firefighter should be able to do other than chase gang-bangers or haul 100 pound hoses into burning buildings. There are any number of city jobs that they could do, both within and without the police and fire departments. Second, it is not a question of whether you can still do the job, it is a question of why you feel entitled to a full pension at such a young age? If you don't want another job with the city, then you have to go do something else for 10 to 15 years until your pension kicks in. Please explain to me why that is not fair.— August 3, 2010 12:25 p.m.
This Crisis Is New? The City Confessed Six Years Ago
JW said: "Paul believes unions have a fiduciary duty to SDCERS." If you want to split hairs to avoid the real issue, fine. The SDCERS board members who were representing the unions on that board, had a fiduciary duty to make sure this scenario didn't play out. The unions negotiated the deals with the city. The unions worked to convince employees to vote for the deals (my spouse questioned the union rep prior to one of the votes, asking why they would put the pension at risk. The answer was it was a good deal for the union and there was no risk to the pension. Oops). The unions then, through their seats on the SDCERS board, helped work the deals through SDCERS. Are you contending that there is a separation between the union reps jobs as union reps and their job sitting on the SDCERS board? Do you also have a bridge you want to sell me?— August 3, 2010 11:58 a.m.