One day I was trying to reach a city official or at least someone in his office that could help me and I had no luck. So that whole week was dedicated to trying to reach someone who could help me. Nothing. the following week I also tried. still not much I was told someone would get back to me. I thought , my gosh what do these people do that they are never in the office? I looked up the positions that are in each office. then I decided to look up their salaries. I was shocked.
So I did a little investigating on local government (San Diego, CA and surrounding areas ) and found out that there are many city government positions that are grossly overpaid.
How is it that our city council members are getting only about $75,000 a year while their assistants are getting $90 to $100,000 a year? Many city employees are getting $290,000 or more a year for doing a job that does not require that sort of a salary. I actually called some of the offices and they could not provide me with the information I was seeking yet they should have been able to do so. People that can do the job properly need to be in those positions, people that accurately answer the questions that are asked of them, not ones that do not want to take the time to research a question. Especially when it is their responsibility to do so. I was so frustrated one day while calling around to get some information, that I had to give up. Why do these people have these jobs if they cannot do them properly? I ended up finding out the info on my own.
Now don't get me wrong I did find a few who were able to help me, or at least give me numbers of someone that may be able to help and they did. These were not the employees in those high paid positions. Many city positions need to be re-evaluated and new people put into these positions, employees who will take the job seriously. I have seen city employees in businesses paying their bills and taking long lunch breaks. Parked at the park for upwards of 2 or more hours. That is way more than the normal hour for lunch, and probably not even that if they get a 30 minute lunch and paid for 8 hours. If these are salaried positions they need to be eliminated and go to hourly pay rates.
People do take advantage of these salaried positions. It is not just city employees, it is for companies such as SDGE (Sempra Energy). We can never lower our utility bills if they are paying people to take care of their personal business while on the clock. If their personal business takes so much time then take the day off, do not use the work vehicle. Better yet give another person a job and divide the hours. I have seen this done by the same employees over time and it is not a one time thing.
This is a terrible waste of city government funds, all salaries should be evaluated and based on the time these people actually spend in their offices, or conducting actual constituent meetings. I called several council offices and found that these assistants were not available whenever I called. My call times varied from morning to late afternoon. Supposedly these people were out in the field. Where in the field? Not in my area that I know of. I never heard of any one coming to speak anywhere near my area. My guess is that the person getting paid the least is doing the most work, while everyone else is out of the office.
I have the actual figures on these budgets and will send them to anyone who might want to view them them. My guess though is that if I found this much abuse at the city level what is going on in the other offices all the way up to the Governor's office, most likely up to the President's office. Now our Gov. of CA. does not collect a salary but he has given salary raises to others that really need to be cut, or at least have some of the perks cut. Also cut out any funds for any pet projects of the government. There are many state Governors that do no collect salaries, and that is commendable. In some levels many others need their salaries cut .
I believe that all these people should take a pay cut of at least 20% since times are so difficult. They have no problem cutting out money and services to the public who really need it, but do not think about taking pay cuts themselves. This includes anyone from a city council office to the President.
They come and go as they please. They should be punching time clocks just the same as those who work in regular jobs. Pay should equal hours actually worked.
School districts should be going over it's budget and cutting administrator's salary, not the salaries of the teachers who have to deal with the students all day long. I know teachers who pay hundreds of dollars yearly out of their pockets to give their kids rewards, they should not have to do this.
Colleges need to go over their administrators salary and cut it by at least 30% and do not give them any more raises until the economy has recovered. Some of these cuts could really help the colleges bottom line. There is a college here that is cutting the salaries and cutting positions, and hours of the staff, cutting funding to many departments, yet he gets a $14,000 increase in his salary already over $189,000 a year. Why should something like that happen?
I believe that the answer to the pension problem for the city of San Diego is to lower it and do so now. The employees should not be paid for the rest of their lives for doing a mediocre job. They were promised to much in the beginning. Actually all retirements should have a baseline. No one should get more than a certain amount and that is it. If they intend to live beyone their means then that is their problem.
Some folks who live on Social Security get about $800 to $1,000 a month,and they have worked also. Some at worked very hard. Yet these other people complain about what they get as public officials.
If anyone else has any ideas on this please contact me. This is my first Blog so please excuse any error's in grammar.
Thanks for reading my blog.
Dawna_63
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