Voice of the People: Fact or Fiction, You DecidePart I

WITH SO MUCH HYPERBOLE COMING FROM ALL DIRECTIONS, LET’S EXAMINE WHAT IS BEING SAID COMPARED TO THE FACTS. One of the biggest accusations coming from the ‘No on C’ crowd is the city is spending our money on excessive employee salaries and benefits. I think a lot of this complaint stems from what each person believes is excessive, or at least what is excessive for someone else’s salary. The facts are: 1. The city has eliminated 60% of staff positions, going from 34 employees to 12.5 over the last 4 years preparing for the budget shortfall. 2. The staff have taken a 10% reduction in pay and have had all benefits frozen over the last 3 years. 3. The city manager’s salary is not $250,000, it is $167,500. In comparison to the 50 cities in the inland empire she ranks in the bottom 20% in salary. Her salary compared to that of the city manager of Grand Terrace in 1983 adjusted for inflation is only 60% of that salary. Another accusation is the mayor and city council are being over-compensated. The fact is that each person on the city council, including the mayor, receive a whopping $250 a month stipend, a $200 per month auto allowance, and are reimbursed for health insurance for each member to a max allowed per the cities employee benefits package. This totals far less than $1000 a month. Ironically city councils of the past have voted themselves much larger benefit packages and some of those members are aligned with those who are currently complaining the loudest about the city council now. Another area of confusion is the total amount of the proposed tax. It’s been said by some in the vote no crowd that we will be paying 5% of water plus 5% of Edison plus 5% of … totaling 25 or 30%. The fact is you would pay 5% of your total utility bill. Simply put you would pay $5 for every $100 of the total of your utility bills. Estimates will average about $30 per household a month.