14 Cities That Are Being Eaten Alive By Public Sector Workers

Although national attention has largely focused on state budget battles like Wisconsin's union showdown and Minnesota's state shutdown, the real spending struggle is actually taking place at the local level.

As federal stimulus money runs dry, states are scaling back on municipal aid and revenue sharing. The cuts are adding immense pressure to strained local governments, many of which are already struggling under huge debt burdens. After years of declining tax revenues, cities and towns across the country are now running out of ways to deal with their ballooning budget deficits.

Public employee costs account for a large share of municipal budget woes. While worker compensation accounts for just 30% of state spending, personnel costs tends to eat up between 70% and 80% of local government funds.

Worker bees are far more numerous than drones, they are female and do most of the work——>>>

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THREE CASTES OF HONEYBEE

Queen Bee
There is only one queen per hive. The queen is the only bee with fully developed ovaries. A queen bee can live for 3-5 years. The queen mates only once with several male (drone) bees, and will remain fertile for life. She lays up to 2000 eggs per day. Fertilized eggs become female (worker bees) and unfertilized eggs become male (drone bees). When she dies or becomes unproductive, the other bees will “make” a new queen by selecting a young larva and feeding it a diet of “royal jelly”. For queen bees, it takes 16 days from egg to emergence.

Worker Bee
All worker bees are female, but they are not able to reproduce. Worker bees live for 4-9 months during the winter season, but only 6 weeks during the busy summer months (they literally work themselves to death). Nearly all of the bees in a hive are worker bees. A hive consists of 20,000 - 30,000 bees in the winter, and over 60,000 - 80,000 bees in the summer. The worker bees sequentially take on a series of specific chores during their lifetime: housekeeper; nursemaid; construction worker; grocer; undertaker; guard; and finally, after 21 days they become a forager collecting pollen and nectar. For worker bees, it takes 21 days from egg to emergence. The worker bee has a barbed stinger that results in her death following stinging, therefore, she can only sting once.

Drone Bee
These male bees are kept on standby during the summer for mating with a virgin queen. Because the drone has a barbed sex organ, mating is followed by death of the drone. There are only 300-3000 drones in a hive. The drone does not have a stinger. Because they are of no use in the winter, drones are expelled from the hive in the autumn.

Newport Beach cops get $5,600 to wash their motorcycles
ocregister.com / BRIAN CALLE

It pays well to wash your motorcycle if you are a cop in Newport Beach, where officers who patrol on motor bikes are paid an additional six hours of overtime every month simply for giving their cycles a wash.

The special compensation equates to, on average, about a 5 percent pay hike for motorcycle officers, or about $5,600 a year in additional monies, according to an analysis of city documents and interviews with key city staff. As alarming as that may seem, this is only one example of special pay that inflates salaries and is often hidden from public view because of the stealth nature of negotiations.The sweet deal is part of the contract negotiated between the police union and the city – yet another creative example of public employee pay abuses at taxpayer expense.

Here's the payout described in a 2010-2011 memo of understanding between the city and the Newport Beach Police Association: "Assigned Motor Officers are responsible for keeping the motorcycle assigned to him/her cleaned and polished at all times. This work shall be performed outside of the regularly scheduled work hours; and compensated at the rate of six (6) additional hours overtime per month (six (6) hours at time and one half equals 9 hours compensation)."......

......... if you take the average annual pay of a police officer in the traffic division at $109,139, then divide it by 2,080 work hours in a year, the hourly rate is $52. So overtime (related to cleaning motorcycles) would be $468 a month or $5,616 a year. That's the equivalent of a 5.1 percent pay raise.

Newport Beach also has a number of categories of "special pay" including: being bilingual, having a master's degree, a commercial drivers license, fire mechanic certification, etc.--SNIP--

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