San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

My wife works for Navair and her group of 8 people are allowed to work 2 hours of overtime every day and they can work on Saturday if they want to and most of them do. So most of them pull in $80-$90K.

My wife told me she can finish her work in two hours and spend the remaining 8 hours chatting. If she tries to do more, her colleagues (mostly veterans) will scold her with comments like "what are you trying to prove?", "don't work us out of a job.", and when she asks them why they do alot of overtime doing nothing they usually reply "they [the gov't] owe me".

Most of them served in the 80s and actually have never fired a shot in a war.

Agreed on CDM, he is a good guy and most unfortunately is the only honest guy among a den of thieves INCLUDING Donna Frye.

So basically we have an insolvent city.

If the city stopped paying 100K+ there would not be any fire fighters.

Why is it that there are always 1000 people applying for each opening in both the fire and police departments? You can't tell me that they cannot find qualified personnel to work for 50K per year. The argument that "they put their lives on the line" rings hollow with veterans returning home from Iraq where they did the same thing for 30k per year.

There should be mandatory paycuts to balance the budgets.

It's our money that they are spending. If the workers are so good, let them find jobs in the private sector.

It seems a little unrealistic, without knowing more, to assume that DeMaio's conclusions are correct.

That number is meaningless without seeing all of the numbers. Does he report all the salaries, increases, percentages, etc?

How many employees that were already making $100k, received a pay raise? How about all of the pay raises for those making $45k, 60K, 90K? Those increases could easily add up to be more than the increases to employees making $100k for the first time. It could be that the City is getting the best bang for the buck out of those $100k + employees. The person making $40k could end up being a complete rip-off for the city. I see the low-end payscale employees working in Balboa park almost every day. They work at a snails pace when they are not on their cell phone or sitting in the city vehicle behind a building or some other obscure location.

What if some of those new members of the "club" only needed, say, a $10,000 pay raise to make it there. On the other hand, what if there even more employees that received raises at a greater rate, percentage wise, - that aren't in the club?

Doesn't seem to be enough information in that blurb to single out a magical number of $100k, and demonize it on that basis alone.

City jobs are some of the best around. Not only do they get paid very well, they can retire after 20 years with full benefits.

Firefighters have the best deal of all. Work typically consists of hanging out at the firehouse, maybe take the truck out and go for a run along the bay. Watch TV, cook some food. Three days a week. Once in a while there is actually a fire. Wow.

"Add on" bonuses bump the salary for a variety of skills, needed for the job or not. Speak spanish? Extra $3 per hour. Know CPR? Extra $2 per hour.

Most politicans are afraid to mention this crap because the city employee unions are such a powerful voting block.

Re-evaluating all of this is long overdue.

jamsvet wrote:

Why is it that there are always 1000 people applying for each opening in both the fire and police departments?
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There never were a thousand (or even a hundred -- often, not even 10) people applying for an opening in the cities I'm familiar with. As a matter of fact, many departments were having a very difficult time trying to find **qualified** applicants for these jobs over the past few years. Times are changing, and the number of applicants will obviously go up during hard times, but when realtors and mortgage brokers are earning six-figure salaries++, you can bet nobody wants to be a cop or firefighter for $50,000/yr.

When you hear stories about thousands of applicants for firefighter/cop openings, it's when they advertise for "entry level" applicants where the only requirement is a high school diploma. They have to do this because of affirmative action requirements (you can debate whether or not this is a good move, but that's a whole 'nother rant). Very few women or minorities put themselves through fire/police academy and paramedic certification classes, so they have to open it up to absolutely everybody when advertising the openings.

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As for the veterans...I also believe they are not paid nearly enough for what they do. Not even close.

This country would be far better off if we valued our vets over Wall Street theives, but until that situation is fixed, we get what we get. :(

johnnycsd,

I'll go out on a limb and guess you have absolutely no knowledge or experience with these positions.

If they need a Spanish-speaking applicant, then they will only hire a Spanish-speaking person for that position. Though some departments may have paid a stipend for bilingual officers in the past, I believe few do so today. To the best of my knowledge, every police officer and firefighter needs to be CPR certified, at a minimum. They will not pay you extra for it. Most fire departments now also require full paramedic certification.

If they are paid so well to do so little, why aren't you doing it? Please apply, do it for a year (if you can even qualify), then tell us all about how easy it is.

Here's a primer on some of the requirements for paramedic certification alone.

http://www.publicsafety.net/career.htm

One more... ;)

One of the reasons for the higher wages might be more overtime requirements. It's possible that the city was actually trying to save money by having existing workers work overtime instead of hiring additional employees.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, they've done studies that show it's less expensive to use overtime workers than it is to hire new workers. This is largely because of administrative expenses, training expenses, and benefits.

I don't know the specifics behind this story, but as pablo mentioned above, the author may have omitted facts that are needed to get the real story.
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And to those who say we should lower wages when times are bad because "everybody else" wants these jobs...

The cost to train public safety employees is immense. The kind of people who apply during hard times (but not good times) are the same people who will leave when times get better. It's actually in the taxpayers' best interests if the city has a stable employee base.

The hiring process itself also costs a tremendous amount of money because you don't just sit in front of a panel of people and answer questions. The hiring process usually is a multi-day affair with manipulative tests (think lots of equipment and training facilities, and overtime for multiple higher-level captains, chiefs, etc.), psychological tests, background checks, etc... in addition to the "normal" written tests and oral interviews most private sector employees are familiar with.

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All that being said, there are ways to cut expenses, and I'll be the first to say that public employees need to contribute a greater portion of their wages to their pension plans, which took huge losses in the markets last year.

Additionally, cities waste a whole lot of money, but that is usually due to political pressures. Most high-level city workers are aspiring politicians, and the same things go on there that you see in D.C. politics. Much of the corruption has to do with REAL ESTATE.

There. Had to tie it in with the housing bubble somehow. :)

Having dealt with many city depts over the years, I would say there's about 30% real dead wood. And some very capable and dedicated people. The trick is to get rid of the trash while keeping the good ones.
I've been to Council meetings where CDM was presenting. I'd say he's pretty close to accurate.

Yeah just look at these slackers...

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005...

Can't speak to the highly paid folks and would not begrudge the firefighters or police for the money they earn.

But the average city worker? I had a work associate who wanted to place a bet about road repair crews. Any time more people were working than standing around watching, he would pay me a buck; more watching than working I would pay him a buck. Let's just say I was glad the bet was only a buck or I might have needed bail out money. Take the bet next time you are out and about.

Before you guys jump to so many conclusions, I recommend you look at the positions held on Demaio's 100K list. About 98% of them are fire and police. Want to cut these salaries? Go ahead. But don't condemn all non-fire and non-police city employees. Many of the workers standing hip deep in sewage in a hole in the middle of your street are making about $15/hour. Focus on the police and fire unions for scaring everyone into giving their employees high wages and tons of overtime. And those gold plated pensions? I'm a retired city employee (not police or fire) and I'm getting about 55% of my former salary as my pension. I am quite familiar with the situation in the city, and all the lies spread by the media in San Diego.

Anecdotal evidence is not very useful in determining whether our city workers are overpaid or underpaid. In any such large group there will be some overpaid slobs as well as some workhorses who give the city and its citizens far more in productivity than their annual pay. Among those whose output far exceeds their pay will be some $110k plus workers.
A better indicator might be turnover. How many city workers quit in order to work in the private sector? Darned few actually. This suggests they know they have a good thing.
BTW, compared to the private sector, what is costly to the employers (i.e., taxpayers), is benefits, not wages. The city workers know this and accordingly seldom quit because they like the safety and retirement benefits of government jobs. Who can blame them? The real blame lies with the spineless city councils that cave in to the unions' demands.

Well....could anyone explain this?

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.a...

"ALBANY -- As he tells it, Randall Hinton is paid $93,803 a year to do nothing.

He spends much of his workday at the State Insurance Fund donning headphones, listening to rock 'n' roll, blues or classical tunes and his superiors are cool with that.

His work agenda involves placing his feet up on his desk, staring out his office window and counting cars on the New York State Thruway. He arrives at 7:30 a.m., leaves at 3:30 p.m., sees no one and talks to no one.

He never does any work. It's been this way for Hinton for most of this decade.

"I just sit here," said Hinton, 55, of Niskayuna, a 27-year state employee who has held several high-level posts at various agencies.

At 6 feet 4 inches and 265 pounds he is an imposing figure who will begin to tear up when he discusses his situation. A member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe in Maine, he said he is being discriminated against because of his national origin and retaliated against for having sued the state.

Since February 2002, Hinton has been director of investigations for the Insurance Fund, but he said he has never been allowed to investigate anything. Instead, he builds up pension credits, year after year, but is unproductive at work because his superiors are blackballing him, he and his former boss say............."