Letter: Let’s look deeper into city employee compensation
To the editor,
–At Tuesday night’s city council meeting; there will be a presentation from the city manager concerning “Ongoing and Planned Actions to Further Reduce City Personnel Costs.”
In the attachment for this item, the city manager goes into some great detail on how the city is understaffed, underpaid, and overworked. And how city has ‘saved’ in excess of $10 million.
This presentation is intended to lay the groundwork for more city employees and higher salaries. If this is accomplished, then the city will require even more money from its residents in order to provide the level of services that the city believes residents want.
I realize that words and numbers can be stated in such a way to ‘support’ or ‘prove’ any theory or hypothesis. And I also believe that 95%+ of all residents of this city will never take the time or make the effort to question any of the ‘facts’ or statements made. Just blindly accept that if it comes from the city – it must be true. That is why the city enjoys an electorate that is compliant and complacent.
Let’s just look deeper into city employee compensation. Complete compensation data is readily available from the California State Controller’s Office website. This data is by city and can be analyzed in many ways (by population, by # employees, etc.). Data is available for 478 cities in California.
For the City of Paso de Robles – here are a few interesting facts:
1. For cities of similar size (31,100 +/- 10%). 32 cities in this range. Paso is #26 as the highest average compensation per city employee.
2. For cities with similar # of city employees (274 +/- 10%) 26 cities are in this range. Paso is #22 as the highest average compensation per city employee.
3. For the 7 cities in SLO County, Paso Robles is #2 in highest average compensation per employee, exceeded only by Grover Beach.
4. Of the 274 city employees; the top 10 have an average compensation of $219,202; the top 25 have an average compensation of $198,256; the top 50 have an average compensation of $172,559.
From this, it is extremely difficult to comprehend the theory that Paso Robles city employees are underpaid. Keep that in your thoughts when you are asked to tax yourselves more.
John Reynolds
Paso Robles
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