(May 2, 2008) -- City Hall has revealed the details of raises for non-safety employees and firefighters. Of course there is no revelation yet regarding the financial outlook for the City of Long Beach. The bad news will come after they get their raises and all is approved by the City Council.

Long Beach City Management hasn't learned anything from its past mistakes. If Long Beach is living paycheck to paycheck, how can the City afford to give out any raises?

Broke means "broke" and in any other industry, other than government, it would have some meaning. For the taxpayers, it means higher fees, less services. However for the employees, it means a guaranteed raise even though they work for an employer without any money.

A five year contract sounds great, but one need only look under the covers to see why the City was willing to sign a five year contract, instead of a year contract. By signing a five year contract, it ties the city to raises for five years when it can't afford even the first year's raise. So now employees will get their 2.4% raise even if the city is broke, and will so for the next five years.

Every extra dollar given in raises compounds the taxpayers' pension obligation. Since non-public employees only pay 2% out of the 16% contribution to their pension, the citizens and taxpayers will not only continue to pick up 14% of their salary for their pension contribution, they will now be paying for the added pension obligation from the raise.

For the purpose of defining the debt for the raises, say the average non-safety employee in Long Beach makes $50K a year. At a 2.4% increase in salary that amounts to an average of $1,200.00 a year per employee. That $1,200.00 x 4,000 employees = $4,800.000 a year x 5 years = another $24,000,000 added onto the current pension obligation.

Remember: this is only for non-safety employees. The compensation package for the firefighters will be more expensive. The average safety employee makes much more than the average non-safety employee, plus the taxpayers' contribution to safety employee's pension fund is 23% of their salary; therefore, the pension obligation for their raise is extremely costly.

At this coming Tuesday's Council meeting, will a majority of Councilmembers really sign off on these two new public employee contracts? Will this be another Council, who with the push of their voting buttons, agrees to once again indebt the taxpayers of Long Beach as was done in 2002?

City Hall justifies these raises because they say they need to get to the middle of comparable cities by 2012, which is at the end of the new five year contract. Why are the city and unions still playing the same game of comparing their salaries and compensation with other cities? This is a game cities play to boost their pay and benefits.

There is no one at City Hall who cannot be replaced. We replaced our Secretary of Defense and he seemed to catch on to his duties rather fast. Are we to believe an accountant, administrative assistant, billing clerk, mechanic, attorney or manager could not be replaced at City Hall?

Management is so willing to increase salaries without any money in the bank because it increases the opportunity for its own salaries to be raised. Certainly, they cannot allow their subordinates at City Hall to be within arms length of their own salary.

We taxpayers have been thrown the crumbs and we are supposed to feel fortunate that as part of the new five year contract, new employees are going to start at a lower pension formula, not the current 2.75% of salary for every year worked. We don't yet know what that formula is going to be; however, by retaining the 2.75% for current employees, it automatically guarantees current employees will stay.

Another perk in their contract at the expense of the taxpayers is giving employees an incentive ($) to stay until retirement was not needed. With all the perks the city gives their employees at the expense of the taxpayer, why would current employees leave?

It is time the public take the time to learn what their City is doing and realize that if they think services are poor, fees high and infrastructure in desperate need of repair now, wait a few years. If the City continues to give raises to employees who have outlandish pension plans, the money to support them will continue to put pressure on the budget. At what point are we going to rebel and call an end to this intolerable behavior of our representatives?

Are we going to wait until the outlay for employee salaries and pensions reaches 100% of available revenue? It is getting closer with every new perk and raise given by those who are supposed to protect the public and our assets.

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