Forbes Magazine has a very timely look at some of the highest paid city managers in California. Look who made the list at number 10?
And note that this is before the $10,000 savings from having to avoid the cost of defending a potential DUI charge is factored in.
Of course this just scratches the surface of Fullerton Taxpayers’ generosity, because Felz is only our third highest paid public employee, and he was the fourth highest paid the night of the Sappy incident. The highest, of course, was the man who made sure he would never be charged in the first place.
Doug Chaffee owes us all his parking space for the next meeting.
Thanks to Jack Dean at Fullerton watch for the heads up on the full article from Forbes, found here: I strongly recommend reading the entire piece to get a sense of the scope of waste in California government in general.
In the midst of a teachers’ union protest for higher taxes the other day, we handed out a list of 585 Fullerton teachers and administrators who make over $90,000. Our camera captured their reaction:
This afternoon the teachers’ union will be at it again, this time on Harbor Blvd. in Downtown Fullerton. John and Ken will be there too, and so will FFFF.
I also heard that the teachers’ unions are planning some kind of “surprise” in response to the conservative radio duo. Come on down, it might be fun.
Political talk radio hosts John and Ken announced that they will be coming to Fullerton on Thursday to counter the demonstration for higher taxes put on by the Fullerton teachers’ unions.
Apparently they were egged on by the receipt of a flyer listing five hundred and eighty five Fullerton teachers and administrators who make a lot of money.
Last week we looked at the number of FSD employees who make over $90k. Now let’s see the salaries of Fullerton Joint Union High School District teachers and administrators for the 2009-10 school year.
Wow. Four hundred and thirty-two of them earn over $90,000 per year. Some of them teach a little extra summer school while others get stipends for CERT training, coaching badminton or being a leader. There’s also a secretary and a couple of custodian supervisors who earned over $60k in overtime alone.
You can look at this data any way you want, but it’s hard to deny that Fullerton’s educators are very well compensated. The myth of the “poor, underpaid teacher” is crushed.
Bonus Trivia
Which FFFF blogger spent several years molding the young minds of Fullerton’s high schoolers back in the 1980’s?
Here’s a bit of exciting news coming out of the County Health Care Agency that is the local entity that oversees Emergency Medical Service provision. A new trend may be emerging.
It’s about the idea contracting with private service providers for paramedic services. The model is pretty simple: the paramedic goes with the ambulance, not with one of a city’s fire engine companies, who necessarily escorts their paramedic to an accident scene then has to toodle on over to the hospital to pick up their boy who has meanwhile accompanied the private ambulance to the ER.
And never a fire in sight; a fire crew mostly just driving around in their big shiny engine, sight-seeing.
Don't you watch the news?
The present scenario is so dysfunctional it’s amazing that it has lasted as long as it has. And that’s a backwards tribute to the “firefighter” lobby who knew fires were decreasing a long time ago and got their foot in the paramedic door; and to the supine politicians who let them do it.
But, as they say, that was then. And this is now. Municipalities are being crushed under the burden of “public safety” salaries and pensions and the current way of doing things is apparently no longer deemed to be carved in stone.
Over the years we’ve learned that boldfaced spin and self-serving regurgitation of misinformation is a regular indulgence for those union mouthpieces over at the Liberal OC. Like most, we quickly grew tired trying to make sense of the noise emerging from the OCEA’s propaganda machine and so we’ve learned to ignore it. But every once in a while someone new comes along and gets sucked right into the blue vortex.
A few weeks ago, Chris Prevatt wrote this blurb supposedly “Busting the Myths” about how public employee pensions don’t cost us hardly anything and the real problem is… well something somewhere else. He backed that up with the audacious claim that public employee compensation only sucks up about 10% of California’s budget, a dubious statement which was then re-quoted by OCEA booster Nick Berardino in this letter to the OC Register.
Well somehow our perplexed new Friends over at UnionWatch.com stumbled upon Prevatt’s steaming pile and decided to break down this mythbuster’s logic. In a lengthy post based on conservative figures and some elementary math, the unnamed blogger discovered that the LiberalOC was off the mark by a factor of six. In fact, conservative calculations pinned public employee compensation at about 67% of California’s budget, far more than Prevatt’s 10%, putting public employees right back at the top of the lineup as a primary suspects in the case of California’s budget woes.
So nobody really knows if it was Prevatt or Berardino who initiated the transmission of this blatant error, but it doesn’t really matter. It served their purposes for a few moments and a couple of union adherents probably sucked it up and will continue to pass the falsehoods along. At least now the rest of us know better.
It’s sort of funny how the “public safety” unions are always telling us that if it weren’t for them everything would be chaos, a sort of post apocalyptic nightmare with all savage criminals roaming the highway and all the structures aflame.
Thanks, FPOA!
Along with this nonsense, we get the image of these people as superior moral beings, giving of themselves to make our lives better through their tireless and limitless self-sacrifice.
So what can we make of the fact that Fullerton’s Police and “Fire” unions have endorsed the unendorsable Roland Chi?
Roland Chi. The creep who poisoned a dozen people in Garden Grove; who ignored over 90 health code violations; who plead nolo contendere and had to leave a sample of his DNA with the DA to dodge prosecution; who illegally used a non-profit charity to promote his campaign; whose very own father was caught red-handed stealing campaign signs.
Roland and Dad. Don't judge us by what we did to you. Judge us by what we say we will do for you.
Oh, yeah. That Roland Chi.
So why are the Fullerton agencies who are always promoting their exclusive powers to preserve public safety to exact ever greater concessions from the taxpayer, supporting the serial law-breaker Roland Chi? If it isn’t self-interest over the public good, then what, O what can it possibly be?
Today the first public employee union campaign signs went up across Fullerton. Predictably, the union is backing all three worthless RINOs: Don Bankhead, Pat McKinley and Roland Chi.
The public safety unions’ motives have always been clear to the observant. They will support the candidates who offer them the biggest return. What do the unions expect? More generous pay raises. More obscene benefits. More unsustainable pensions. Multi-million dollar retirement packages. And more debt and taxes to pay for it.
Rookie draft complete. Now presenting the 2010 Union Dream Team
The unions have proven that they hold little regard for Fullerton taxpayers, as evidenced by their pension-driven destruction of Fullerton’s financial future for the benefit of a few public servants. They lobby for raises, pray on the emotions of the weak, and lie about future benefit costs all while complaining about their cushy jobs. When it’s time to negotiate with our empty-headed council, all of the union deceit comes together like a finely tuned machine. It’s sole purpose? To line their own pockets in exchange for the least amount of effort and accountability as possible.
How could the unions take so much from Fullerton’s conservative voter base? That’s easy. For decades, Republican voters have been fooled in to electing spineless cowards who are afraid to stand up for taxpayers at their end of the bargaining table. They shrivel up in fear at the thought of going against the unions and offer nothing but endless excuses when their negligence is exposed.
It’s frightening, but it’s true. The unions are in it for themselves, taxpayers be damned. They won’t quit until we’ve been sucked dry, and they’ve found just the right candidates to do it. In 2010, it really is “us vs. them.” Let’s bring some sanity back to this city.
