More officers means more pension debt

I read Jeff Mitchell’s column on Saturday. His belief is that the citizens of Salinas need more pubic safety persons in order to reduce crime and that only $3 million from the anticipated $20 million sales tax revenue might be allocated to pay for more police officers. I also would like to have more police officers on the beat.

But my major concern is that the cost of hiring more police officers using the current salary and pension benefits plan formula is too high. The reason that the city staffers put this issue on the ballot is that Salinas cannot generate enough revenue to pay for the officers. The current formula for the public safety officers’ total compensation package is too expensive. The dollar amount spent for these public employees will hurt the city of Salinas.

We, the citizens of Salinas cannot afford to pay the retired pubic employees $100,000 or $200,000 or more a year at their retirement age of 55 or 57 or 60. Can you believe that a retired fire chief in San Diego is getting over $900,000 a year! How will San Diego handle that debt for many years?

How will Salinas handle a similar type of public pension debt? This excessive public pension debt is common in the majority of municipalities.

The answer to this excessive compensation is to reduce the amount paid. If we can reduce the compensation by 25 percent, we can hire more officers with the savings. The exact opposite has happened since 2006. The compensation of the officers has increased, which reduces the amount of officers that Salinas can afford to hire.

This is the reason the upcoming special tax vote is so flawed. The special tax group wants more officers to protect them from the robberies and crime, but they have not thought of the cost to Salinas. In the future, when the pubic employees retire at a cost of 70 or 80 or 90 percent of their salaries, this will bankrupt Salinas!

I would prefer Salinas not to hire any police officers until the cost is affordable.

One other thing, I hope this 1 percent sales tax doesn’t hurt the economy of Salinas. Japan raised their sales tax 3 percent a months ago. They are officially in a recession!

Also, let’s not get in the same position as Pacific Grove, which has a population of 15,000 people and a public pension debt of $45,000,000!

James Sang

Owner, Sang’s Café, Salinas

Green patches on Davis Road look costly

I happened to notice the huge green patches on Davis Road in Salinas this week painted to mark all the crossings for the bicycle lane. A couple of extra white lines might have cost a fraction of what it must’ve cost to cover wide areas with green paint. Some of them are by difficult left turns where it might distract drivers and cause more accidents. But if we consider the new tax increases passed by a few voters, I’m sure the Salinas City Council can now afford to cover all the spots with dollar bills instead, just to show us how much they like wasteful spending.

Bill Graham

Salinas

Turkey pardon one thing done right

President Obama picks and chooses which laws he will enforce and those he will ignore. This is directly in violation of the oath he has twice taken.

He has also repeatedly changed written laws without any legal authority to do so.

Recently he pardoned two turkeys in a ceremony at the White House, and it was done in a very proper and efficient manner. Once more proving the old adage, “It takes one to know one.”

M. A. Lore

Salinas

Why focus on the prison?

I was very disappointed on Thanksgiving morning to open The Californian to see the front cover story was about the menu Soledad prisoners would be enjoying on this day of thanks. How about focusing on all the volunteers that worked hard to feed people less fortunate? I can think of many other stories that could have been written; why focus on the fact that someone who goes to prison for doing wrong will be enjoying turkey and all the trimmings? If The Californian has nothing better to write how about just wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. A blank page would be better than that article.

Teresa Nunes

Salinas

Police should reflect city’s racial make-up

Talking to my neighbors and friends, we all agree these protests (about events in Ferguson, Missouri) are a waste of time. Vandalism is a crime. Looting is also wrong.

The grand jury decision in Ferguson was wrong. The police force there should represent the racial make-up of the town’s population. This will prevent future problems.

The same concept should also come to Salinas. The police chief here should be Mexican-American; with integrity and humility. Sixty to 70 percent of the police officers in Salinas should be Mexican-American and bilingual.

Dan Lawson

Salinas

Give the gift of your time

In view of so much bad news going on in our world today, I thought maybe it would be good to share some good news and tell about good Christian people who are making a difference. My husband is disabled due to multiple sclerosis and has been in a wheelchair for several years. Lots of things don’t get done around the house that need doing! Two different groups of Christian people chose us to come and help out with anything we needed done. One group, from a Christian school in Aptos, got our name from someone, and I had never met any of them. They came and cleaned windows inside and out, blinds, yard work, etc., and kept thanking me for letting them do it. At the end, we all held hands and prayed for my husband, who was in a rehab facility and having a really hard time.

The next group was from a Bible study in Scotts Valley, and my niece was in the group. They had the same idea of wanting to help someone, and 10 people came for four hours and worked like you wouldn’t believe. They trimmed outside (and hauled off all the trimmings), cleaned more outside windows, weeded, painted baseboards, cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms to shine, etc. It has lifted my spirits with so much joy to realize how good people really are.

The reason for writing this is to perhaps plant a seed for others. Instead of so much time spent on shopping and over-shopping, why not reach out to someone who is suffering with health problems or the elderly who can no longer do the basic things. Just to run someone’s errands, help out with care, help with cleaning, mowing a lawn — the list is endless. The best gift we can give someone is ourselves — not things.

Suzanne Stewart

Salinas

New HUD rule needs repeal

On June 9, the House of Representatives voted 219-207 in favor of an amendment by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to the HUD appropriations bill to “prohibit [HUD from] use of funds to implement, administer, or enforce the proposed rule entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.’”

This action was necessitated by the wholesale assault on local zoning authority in those jurisdictions which have accepted federal community development grants.

Five months later, the rule is now scheduled to go into effect at the end of the year, and the government funding discussions that will dominate the lame duck session are the last chance to stop this federal government usurpation of local control over zoning decisions.

Here is how Investor’s Business Daily described the rule in a June 20 editorial:

“Under the scheme, HUD plans to map every U.S. neighborhood by race and publish ‘geospatial data’ pinpointing racial imbalances. Areas deemed overly segregated will be forced to change their zoning laws to allow construction of subsidized and other affordable housing to bring more low-income minorities into ‘white suburbs.’ HUD’s maps will be used to select affordable housing sites.

“It’s part of an ambitious agenda to eliminate ‘racial segregation,’ ZIP code by ZIP code, block by block, through the systematic dismantling of allegedly ‘exclusionary’ building ordinances. In effect, federal bureaucrats will have the power to rezone your neighborhood.”

One might ask what HUD’s motive is for pushing far outside the envelope in forcing the destruction of local zoning authority? IBD explains it succinctly saying,

“Once HUD creates a national discrimination database and supplies ‘nationally uniform data’ of what it thinks 1,200 communities should look like, it threatens to reshape the demographics of every neighborhood in America. By showing statistical ‘disparities,’ the database would render charges and findings of actual discrimination unnecessary.

“This has zero to do with housing discrimination, which has been illegal since 1968. This is about redistribution of resources. It’s also about political redistricting, a backdoor attempt by Democrats to gerrymander voting districts in their favor.”

The federal government funding decisions you are facing during this lame duck session will directly impact whether hundreds of local communities will find themselves in federal court, wasting taxpayer resources on both sides of the issue.

Please join us in urging appropriators and leadership to include Rep. Gosar’s defund language into any underlying government funding bill that they produce.

Nathan Mehrens

President, Americans for Limited Government