Posted on 08/26/2011 2:21:11 PM PDT by dennisw
When Beverly Hills residents found out that many of their city’s 950 municipal and public safety employees were earning stunning salaries, 13 weeks of paid vacation, unlimited overtime and other tax-free retirement benefits, taxpayers were outraged and city officials rushed into closed-door sessions to figure out what to do.
These revelations, exposed through the efforts of the city’s hometown newspaper, The Beverly Hills Courier, unmasked an even deeper problem: many California cities, and likely other municipalities across the U.S., are being strangled by the cost of ballooning pension benefits they can no longer afford.
“What we have now is a grab bag of incredible benefits for public employees that are totally detached from what’s been happening in the private sector, and it’s neither fair nor sustainable,” said John Mirisch, a first-term Beverly Hills council member elected in 2009. “When the city was rolling in dough, officials may have thought the salary and pension structure was sustainable, but certainly, it was not fair.”
In Beverly Hills, city employees do not contribute to their own retirement pensions; the city pays everything with half of that contribution being largely tax-free, according to the Beverly Hills Pension Task Force headed by City Treasurer Elliot Finkel, as reported in the Courier. The Task Force presented its findings at a recent city council meeting.
When a city employee retires, he or she is guaranteed a fixed amount that increases every year. If CalPERS funding falls short, taxpayers make up the difference.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Average Beverly Hills Employee Pension Over $3.2 Million
Posted Thursday August 25, 2011 – 5:51pm
The pensions promised by Beverly Hills to all of its employees will run to $1 million to over $3 million or more for each one, simple calculations show. Based on The Courier’s calculations, the average cumulative retirement pay for each City worker is $3.321 million. Each year, Beverly Hills turns over to the California Public Employees Retirement System, CalPERS, a certain amount of money. None of the pension is paid for by an employee. All is paid by Beverly Hills.
Government Employees have become the most powerful Special Interests group in America.
At some point the voters and taxpayers are going to wake up and cut the head off this beast.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of lib taxpayers! ;-)
The Beverly Hill Till Dillies
San Francisco may have a leg up on Beverly Hills. SF will cover the cost of their municipal employees to have a gender change. Now every municipal building will have to have 3 restroom. Ladies, Gents and Pot Luck.
They should all be imprisoned for theft.
Idiots voted this bunch in....got what they asked for as far as I’m concerned!!!!
“Earlier this year, citing a budget deficit, the city council sought to make a number of cuts, including eliminating a quarter of its business marketing budget, instituting fee increases for the use of city parks by organized sports, removing special police coverage from local schools, and reducing or eliminating the city’s longstanding two-hour free parking.”
Intereting... park fee increases and increases in parking fees constitute “cuts”??
Where are the cuts in the salaries and the benefits and the number of public employees??
The first that should be cut are the city councilmen.
“Government Employees have become the most powerful Special Interests group in America. At some point the voters and taxpayers are going to wake up and cut the head off this beast.”
This is particularly true of federal employees. If you look at the parking lot in any federal agency you’ll see new and expensive luxury cars aplenty. Many feds are dual income couples with government jobs. Typical pay (not including benefits) in the DC area is over $100K.
BTW..have your seen anything new about Bell?...anyone gone to jail yet?
Anyone notice that it is primarily Democrat controlled cities where the salaries have run amok?
They’re not being strangled by pensions. They are being strangled by the politicans who approved the pensions, and who the idiot voters keep re-electing. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
** snicker **
That newspaper is trying real hard to be relevant, where was it before all these agreements were made?
They should defunct the city and form a new one, tell everyone associated with Beverly Hills to have a nice day.
Tyranny is where the government outvotes the public
A few months ago on a related thread someone posted pictures from a city council meeting where white retirees were pitted against (current) black residents because of the financial chokehold the retirees had on a city. It is nice to see these bastards exposed.
It would have been a hoot for all those white retirees to announce they would be moving out.
So sad. Apparently both the electorate and the electeds of these distressed cities can’t read. NYC went through the same issues - thanks to sweetheart union settlements by then Mayor Lindsay - putting a succeeding mayor in deep waters and pleading for (and getting) assistence from the great god FedGov. >PS
Calif legislature is currently busy passing rules that allow illegals to get college at in-state tuition prices & also allowing them to have Cal-grant loans for such college attendance.
White citizens cannot afford to go to Calif schools, but they are pandering to the illegals.
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