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.
median household income - $26.7K
what’s the median police salary in that city?
Republican Scott Walker of Wisconsin did not fire a single “public servant” ; It’s the Democrat party hacks who fire police, firemen, and teachers.
It is striking that most probably think of Camden as a black populated city, but it seems illegal immigration really is fueling this poverty.
All that beautiful waterfront going to waste because of what’s behind it...
IIRC, police and fire were exempted by Scott Walker.
They can’t continue to be treated as the Holy of Holies.
And that's MEDIAN pay.
Unless I’m mistaken the Camden County democrats have shifted the cost of policing Camden to the suburbs. This may be a “good” lesson for the nation. The democrat cesspool cities will swallow the suburbs. That already happened in large swaths of Northern New Jersey.
All Camden needs to do is triple it’s property and business tax rates thereby tripling its tax revenue. All right thinking people know that tax rates never influence behavior so increasing the tax rates always increases tax revenue. It’s an article of faith for the progressive democrats who govern sh!tholes like Camden.
Seriously, if they could figure out how to tax crack and meth, Camden could become Switzerland
Worked there in 1988 and my impression then was it was a low rent Philly suburb.
They’ll always cut the services that hurt the general populace most, as a punishment for not paying enough taxes. The pigs will keep their third assistant masseuse on staff and fire all the police.
In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s governments hired employees giving them extravagant retirement benefits that they knew full well they would not be able to pay because “they needed to hire the best people and the best people would go over to the next city if they didn’t.” So every city offered wildly unpayable benefits. Now it is 2012, and employees want to cash in. The result is that cities will go bankrupt if they pay, so the cities now need to go bankrupt and renegotiate the pensions.
When we hear how many hundreds of trillions our obligations are, they are counting obligations like these cities. But we shouldn’t worry too much because they won’t get paid anyway.
Most Americans are unaware that one of the greatest threats to their freedom may be a United Nations program known as Agenda 21. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Sustainable Development created Agenda 21 as a sustainability agenda which is arguably an amalgamation of socialism and extreme environmentalism brushed with anti-American, anti-capitalist overtones.
“Land… cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice…”
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Gentrification. In Camden, yes, there is a high crime rate. But now Camden also has (1) a beautiful waterfront area with museums and other attractions, business offices, and condominiums; and (2) an ever-growing community of medical centers and hospitals.
As for the police force, every little town in NJ has its own police department and its own school district. This is the main reason why taxes are so high here. So there has been talk about consolidation. Of course, you'd think the suburbs would be first to consolidate their police forces. However, because every NJ town is now forced to have a percentage of "affordable housing," every town now has its share of criminals. (And, no, I'm not suggesting that everyone who lives in affordable housing is a criminal; however, there will be a percentage who are.) In a way, Camden has now pushed many of its criminals into the suburbs, and now it's building itself up. ;-)
I am currently reading Stanley Kurtz's "Spreading the Wealth, How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities."
Basically, Obama hates the 'burbs as they are elitist and racist in his view. He will drain the suburbs of cash to fund the cities with the goal that residents of the suburbs will find that they will be gently (or not so gently) forced to concentrate in the cities.
Kurtz shows how he has been groomed for years by the Chicago "regionalists" and will execute this with a vengeance if he gets a second term.
Bingo. One Democrat plan now being discussed to "save" the cities is to merge the cities with the suburbs. Each county (or more) would then be just one political entity.
If that happens, expect everyone everywhere to end up paying for the foolish policies of the cities. And say goodbye to traditional small-town freedoms.
Since Camden is a safe city with well behaved residents, I am sure there won’t be a problem firing their police department.
/s
Equally shared misery. That’s the way Dims will do ya.
(ruin the city, then spread the ruin to the suburbs via mass transit and runaway pensions)
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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