Home › Forums › Financial Markets/Economics › dang those overpaid underworked wastrel firefighters again..
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CA renter.
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August 12, 2012 at 2:26 PM #750108August 13, 2012 at 5:06 AM #750133
CA renter
Participant[quote=paramount][quote=sdduuuude]Here’s some real hero-types !
Viva la union.
Why am I not surprised that meter maids make a 100k+ as a California Public Union Employee?
I do hear they are EXTREMELY honorable though…[/quote]
Paramount, either you need to firm up your reading comprehension skills, or you need to stop mistating things.
None of the people mentioned made $100K, much less $100K+. The two whose compensation was $92K-$93K were in *supervisory* positions, they were not “meter maids,” AND that included ALL of their compensation, including medical benefits and pension costs. Mind you, those pension costs tend to rise if their funds to meet the expected rate of return on their investments (some not sure who runs their pension fund and whether or not they use smoothing methods). Since last year was a bad year for most investors, there’s a good chance these costs are overstated, relative to historical norms.
…………..From the article:
“In this case, outsourcing parking-enforcement duties would benefit the taxpayers among Hermosa Beach’s population of slightly less than 20,000. For an example of how such a switch might work, Hermosa officials could travel about 45 miles south along the coast to Newport Beach, where the city successfully moved to outsource parking enforcement last year.
“We have seen increased revenues with the private company operating the meter program,” Newport Councilwoman Leslie Daigle said.
Since Newport made the move, the city “has seen a 24.4 percent increase in parking-meter revenues over last year and salary savings of approximately $500,000 from outsourcing parking meter operations,” according to Tara Finnigan, a spokeswoman for the city.
Privatizing parking meter duties also is a national trend, as detailed in a recent study by the libertarian Reason Foundation. Chicago and Indianapolis have had success with outsourcing parking enforcement, and other cities including New York, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Memphis, Tenn., and Harrisburg, Pa., are considering privatization proposals.”
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This means that the cost for parking in the city has gone UP, and that they are vigorously enforcing the parking laws, some of which are probably new in order to drive up revenue.
It looks like their revenue from parking fines and PD administration fines are about ~$2.6 million per year over the past ~5 years. If their revenue goes up about 24.4% with this privatization, that means they are taking in an additional $634,400.
So, it looks like the citizens are paying an additional ~$134,000/year to privatize the system. (This does assume that most of the revenues are coming from local citizens, and not tourists, but if you live in an area where most of the meters are used by local citizens, they are STILL paying for it.) Whether they are paying “taxes” or “fines” doesn’t really matter, the point is they are still paying for it.
What Newport Beach DID lose were some of the few decent-paying jobs with benefits for local citizens. Tell me…how did the citizens of Newport Beach fare in this deal?
Revenue numbers are line item# 5212 from here:
http://www.newportbeachca.gov/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=13908
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As far as the other cities being “successful” in their attempts to privatize, not sure about the other cities (not enough time to research right now), but this was a HUGE deal in Chicago, fraught with all sorts of fraud and abuse. Needless to say, the citizens of Chicago absolutely did NOT benefit from the privatization. Based on the fact that they are calling Chicago’s privatization debacle a “success” makes the rest of their claims dubious, IMHO.
“For $1.15 billion, paid upfront, the City Council approved a plan championed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008 that privatized Chicago’s 36,000 meters for 75 years. In a deal that was widely criticized for selling taxpayers short, Chicago Parking Meters was given the right to keep all meter revenues until 2084. Drivers have since seen sharp increases in parking rates under the deal.
After leaving office a year ago, Daley, along with his former corporation counsel and two top press aides, went to work for Katten Muchin Rosenmann LLP, the law firm that handled the parking meter deal for the city.
Since the meter deal took effect, city officials have paid the parking meter company more than $2 million in what they call “true-up adjustments” to make up for parking spaces taken out of service.
The amount billed for those adjustments skyrocketed in the first nine months of the 2011 budget year, to $14 million — a sum Emanuel is refusing to pay. The company hasn’t submitted its claim for the last three months of the year yet.”
More:
“Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) — Chicago drivers will pay a Morgan Stanley-led partnership at least $11.6 billion to park at city meters over the next 75 years, 10 times what Mayor Richard Daley got when he leased the system to investors in 2008.
Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Allianz Capital Partners may earn a profit of $9.58 billion before interest, taxes and depreciation, according to documents for a $500 million private note sale by their Chicago Parking Meters LLC venture. That is equivalent to 80 cents per dollar of projected revenue. Standard Parking Corp., which runs 30,000 spaces at the city’s O’Hare and Midway airports, earned 4.84 cents on that basis last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The deal illustrates how Wall Street banks, recipients of more than $300 billion in taxpayer bailouts in the worst credit collapse since the Great Depression, are profiting from helping states and cities close record recession-induced deficits by selling bonds and leasing public properties. Chicago gave up billions of dollars in revenue when it announced in 2008 that it leased Morgan Stanley its 36,000 parking meters, the third- largest U.S. system, for $1.15 billion to balance its budget, said Alderman Scott Waguespack.”
August 13, 2012 at 7:10 AM #750134moneymaker
Participant[quote=CA renter][quote=moneymaker]Anyone know why they roll a humungous fire truck along with the ambulance on a call that is clearly not fire related. Perhaps if they had not done that then station 17 would have had someone there to save the life of that person that died in their driveway a week ago.[/quote]
From another thread…
[quote=CA renter][quote=briansd1][quote=no_such_reality]
Same basic mindset as with LAFD that requires a fire truck team to be dispatched on every call even though 98% are medical only calls.
A city that isn’t growing and rejuvenating is a stagnant and dead city.[/quote]
I agree.
Old folks on fixed income in a no-growth city won’t be paying the pay raises of public employees.
It’s kinda screwed to dispatch fire engines for medical calls. I’ve noticed that way too often.[/quote]
In many cases, the fire engines/trucks are dispatched because they can arrive on scene sooner. In many (most) departments, there are more trucks/engines than ambulances because when there’s a fire, they need all the trucks (and often bring trucks in from neighboring departments, too). They typically don’t need multiple ambulances all at once. If the ambulances are in a distant location or on other calls, the patients can be treated sooner; and in emergency services, response times are everything.
Anyway, the trucks/engines that you see dispatched to medical calls almost always have paramedics (that tends to be the requirement these days, though there might be some with older EMTs) and all the medical equipment. They can treat the patient sooner. The difference between an engine/truck and ambulance is that the truck can’t transport.
Additionally, most ambulances only have two employees on board (two paramedics or paramedic/EMT team). On many calls, they need additional personnel because one or two people might be working directly on the patient [edit: and getting medical history from family members or searching through medicine cabinets, etc. if no family member is there, etc.], another communicating with the hospital, another setting up equipment/medication, one to possibly deal with transport/helicopter landings, etc. (you don’t see this at the site, they almost always have to transport the patient to an off-site landing zone). Then, there are the 300++ pound patients who need to be carried down stairs or through narrow passageways, etc.
Believe it or not, the fire departments do know what they’re doing. Even though you might not understand what’s going on, it doesn’t mean that they’re wasting resources or taxpayers’ money.[/quote][/quote]
I’m sure I could justify needing “helpers” in my job too, doesn’t mean I’m going to get them though because I work in the private sector. I would have no problem with the ambulance calling out the fire truck if they needed the jaws of life or something they don’t have, but every single call- they roll a big fire truck-seriously!
August 13, 2012 at 11:49 AM #750145sdduuuude
ParticipantJust because both the direct employees and the outsourced employees both make too much money doesn’t mean they are both OK.
August 13, 2012 at 4:27 PM #750209Participant[quote=moneymaker][quote]
I’m sure I could justify needing “helpers” in my job too, doesn’t mean I’m going to get them though because I work in the private sector. I would have no problem with the ambulance calling out the fire truck if they needed the jaws of life or something they don’t have, but every single call- they roll a big fire truck-seriously![/quote]
1. They aren’t “helpers.”
2. If the ambulance gets there first and determines that they don’t need the additional personnel/equipment, they will cancel the engine.
3. I’ll bet your job doesn’t involve matters of life or death. If it did, you’d have access to all kinds of “helpers.”
August 13, 2012 at 4:30 PM #750210Participant[quote=CA renter][quote=moneymaker]
[quote]
I’m sure I could justify needing “helpers” in my job too, doesn’t mean I’m going to get them though because I work in the private sector. I would have no problem with the ambulance calling out the fire truck if they needed the jaws of life or something they don’t have, but every single call- they roll a big fire truck-seriously![/quote][/quote]
1. They aren’t “helpers.”
2. If the ambulance gets there first and determines that they don’t need the additional personnel/equipment, they will cancel the engine. It’s important to remember that very little extra money is spent when two vehicles respond — they respond within small areas, so don’t use much more gas, which is the only additional expense.
3. I’ll bet your job doesn’t involve matters of life or death. If it did, you’d have access to all kinds of “helpers.”
August 13, 2012 at 4:30 PM #750208Participant[quote=sdduuuude]Just because both the direct employees and the outsourced employees both make too much money doesn’t mean they are both OK.[/quote]
No, the “outsourced” employees do NOT make much money. These are the jobs that will replace the once-decent public jobs, but the new jobs will pay a much lower rate (hooray for local workers who will all miraculously benefit from this!). It’s the corporations, specifically the heads of the corporations and the “investors,” [these are the people behind the attacks on the unions] who will make all the money.
Again, how the captialist masters have managed to convince Joe Sixpack that he will somehow benefit from this is the greatest mystery of our time, IMHO. (But let’s keep hammering on those gays who want to marry…and the abortionists…and the guns and the American flag…).
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