Retired schools chiefs earn big pensions

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Here's some news to ponder on your Labor Day holiday - when it comes to big-bucks payouts, some of the biggest winners in the state retirement system are local school and community college chiefs.

A check of the California State Teachers' Retirement System shows that 77 retired superintendents - some from very small districts - are spending their golden years earning pensions of more than $200,000 a year.

At the head of the class is James Enochs, longtime superintendent of the Modesto school system, who retired after 49 years with an annual pension of $301,000. (Enochs also got a school named after him.)

Fredrick Wentworth of the San Joaquin County Office of Education comes in at No. 2 with $296,000 a year, followed by Edward Hernandez Jr. of the Rancho Santiago Community College District at $291,000.

Closer to home, there's Marilyn Miller, retired schools superintendent in wealthy Hillsborough, pulling down $268,000 a year, and Johanna VanderMolen, late of the Campbell Union School District, retired at $267,000 annually.

In the East Bay, former San Leandro schools chief Christine Lim clocked out with a $244,000-a-year pension, and Brenda Miller of the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District exited with $228,000 a year flowing into her pocketbook.

Then there's the average teacher's pension in California: about $39,600 a year.

Occu-pain: They've got the Occupy signs up and the sleeping bags out, but the kids who have taken over the strip in front of the Federal Reserve Building on Market Street in San Francisco appear to be more homeless than political.

"It's both interesting and sad," said Occupy Bernal's Buck Bagot. "It's like history has passed them by."

When Bagot and his allies were in the neighborhood the other day to talk to banks about putting the brakes on foreclosures, the two groups didn't even mix.

Neighborhood businesses are starting to complain - and beat cops tell us that lice, feces and other health hazards are showing up again as well.

So far, the city has pretty much chosen to look the other way.

"When people complain," one officer told us, "all we can do is tell people to call the powers that be."

Full house: San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee's big business-tax overhaul measure, coming to the Nov. 6 ballot, has become the full employment act for political consultants - including some of the very folks who tossed grenades at Lee in last year's mayoral race.

The campaign is largely being overseen by Lee's mayoral campaign advisers, Ace Smith and Sean Clegg of SCN Strategies. But they have brought aboard:

-- John Whitehurst and Mark Mosher, who ran City Attorney Dennis Herrera's campaign against Lee - which included a TV ad that accused the mayor of being a stooge for special interests.

-- Alex Tourk, who managed former Supervisor Bevan Dufty's mayoral campaign and is now a strategist for tech-industry powerhouse Ron Conway, a key player in the mayor's tax overhaul effort.

-- And Nicole Derse, who ran Board of Supervisors President David Chiu's occasionally sharp-edged mayoral campaign against Lee.

Even former Supervisor and lefty flamethrower Chris Daly, who now works for the Service Employees International Union, was on hand Thursday when the mayor hosted a "big tent" powwow for his tax coalition members.

Taking names: Mayor Ed Lee has just sworn in his latest commission appointments - including Long Term Care Coordinating Council member Traci Dobronravova.

A long name - though not as long as Youth Commission appointees Iris Alejandra Guzman-Ramos and Paul Elliott Monge-Rodriguez.

Fast track: State Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's bill to eliminate the eastbound carpool lane on Interstate 80 during the morning commute is headed to Gov. Jerry Brown's desk, having sailed though the Legislature.

One of the selling points was that the lane is so underused that Caltrans stopped conducting car counts on the stretch from the Bay Bridge to the Carquinez Bridge.

This year, Caltrans did perform a congestion study that found motorists in all eastbound lanes of I-80 during the morning commute were enduring delays of only about 30 seconds at most.

In other auto news, the Legislature has passed a bill Ma wrote to rename a 2-mile stretch of Sloat Boulevard in San Francisco after her mentor, former state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton. The street, part of state Highway 35, runs past Burton's family home.

"We're going to call it the John Burton Highway," Ma said, "although a number of lawmakers thought the John F- Burton Highway might be more appropriate."