Check out this clip of resident Barry Levinson challenging the city council to tackle our unfunded pension liability problem at the February 2nd council meeting.
Once he gets past the dreary numbers, Barry suggests that the city manager obtain outsourcing bids to create a dollar baseline as a heavy bargaining chip during the next set of negotiations with the unions.
The lumbering Mayor Pro Tem, both a recipient and perpetrator of the ridiculous pension scheme, became agitated and cut Barry off several times, but Barry got his point across in the end.
The following commentary was sent in by Fullerton’s own Barry Levinson.
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Since the November 2010 elections, I have read two articles on the Friends for Fullerton’s Future site that require further discussion. The first one stated that the rescinding of the utility tax increases of 1994 has saved the taxpayers approximately 150 million dollars since 1994 to the present time. Hats off to Council member Bruce Whitaker and all the people who helped make that rescission a reality. The fact that we were able to elect him to the council indicates that we are making some progress. But this is not a time to sit back and savor our victory locally as well as nationally.
We cannot afford any complacency since another even larger albatross is now facing the fine citizens of Fullerton, namely the unfunded liabilities for public pensions and retiree medical costs.
The second article deals with the reporting by CALPERS that the Fullerton police and fire pension obligations are now facing a 127 million dollar unfunded liability as of June 30, 2009. In other words, we the taxpayers of Fullerton are currently on the hook for this astronomical amount.
If you add the unfunded liability of the miscelleous employees as well as the City’s unfunded retiree health care benefits, it skyrockets up to and probably well over the 200 million dollar mark! Twice the amount saved from the utility tax rescission.
I suggest that the citizens of Fullerton have to be just as irate now as when we were facing the massive utility tax increase in 1994. The one common thread between these two instances is our city council. We must make it clear that we the people are watching very closely the actions taken by our council as they prepare to negotiate with all of the city’s unions! We must speak out loud and clear and demand that the council vote for significant cuts in these benefits coupled with significant employee contribution increases.
I suggest that all fellow readers of this blog attend the February 1st Council Meeting to speak to the council during its Open Agenda Segment to insist that major employee cost savings must be implemented across the board this year. We must demand no less and be ready to take further action if a majority of the council defies the people one more time.
This just came in from council candidate Barry Levinson:
Barry Levinson
Last Tuesday night was the vote on the issuance of housing bonds by the RDA in the amount not to exceed $29 million. The Mayor spoke and indicated that there will be no public comments on this issue.
The city attorney right before the vote was to begin, rightly reminded Mayor Bankhead that since the people cannot vote on whether or not to approve the bond issue, we should at least be allowed to voice our non-binding opinions.
Here are some of my comments I presented to the council:
Mayor and council shame on all of you for almost forfeiting our right as Fullertonians to speak out on this housing bond issuance.
We need better oversight over the RDA projects. The city council and the rest of the RDA should not be the ones policing themselves.
The RDA is the only taxing authority that requires no voter approval. We as taxpayers, S/B given more information and more time to review these bond measures before it comes to a vote by council.
Since there will be 2 possibly 3 new council members as of November 2, I suggested that this item be postponed to after the next election.
The council’s answers largely were defensive. No one touched on the third rail issue of no voter participation! Mayor Bankhead remained conspicuously quiet throughout the council’s responses to our objections.
And there you go; another council meeting where our rights as citizens were eroded and $29 million was obligated by the city council without a single vote cast by the people!
The latest Mickadiet column gave Fullerton candidate Barry Levinson a chance to tell us what he really thinks of mayor Don Bankhead, and Barry did not disappoint.
See, Barry contacted the mayor when he learned that a sex offender was about to move into his neighborhood, which should have been protected by Jessica’s Law due to it’s proximity to Laguna Lake park.
Barry Levinson
The way Barry tells it, Bankhead did nothing to solve the neighborhood’s sex offender problem. Well actually, it’s worse than that. Bankhead launched a typical delay and distract strategy to avoid facing the issue, doing nothing while telling Barry that he was working on it. In Levinson’s own words:
He said Bankhead “assured us he was ‘on our side’ and would get back to us within a few days with more information.” Ten days went by, “no call from Mayor Bankhead.” When they finally talked, he says, Bankhead “had no answers for us but assured us he was still working the problem. That was the last time the mayor ever spoke to us … He did absolutely nothing. This mayor always touts his police background … What a total disappointment.”
What?
City staff told Bankhead that Jessica’s Law had no teeth, so there was nothing that the police could do about it. Great. Responsibility absolved, right? Rather than pursue the issue by pushing for a new ordinance (a task that Levinson ended up taking on himself), Bankhead opted for the do-nothing-and-hope-Barry-the-citizen-goes-away approach.
Major backfire. Now Barry is challenging the Burger King’s 22-year rule.
