Rather than cutting way back on the bloated city work force, administrative costs, and bureaucratic red tape, our City Council elects to protect their incumbency and continue rewarding our city employees, already among the highest paid in the country. They will raise taxes, also among the highest in the country, to compensate for decreased revenues and pay for increases in pensions and medical benefits.
I sure wish I had a pension plan and medical benefits, instead of a sadly depleted 401K. No one is going to bail me out so I can afford to pay for Cobra. I’m hoping I make it to 65 before I have a serious medical condition, like some of my colleagues, who also lost their jobs recently.
I’m just a lowly resident who soon won’t be able to afford to live here, any more. I would be glad to give up my annual bonus, if I could get a job with the City, “workin’ for the man ev’ry night and day”… The City will need to hire more meter readers in order to ticket more irresponsible people who didn’t run back fast enough to feed the meter more quarters, for each 15 minutes of parking, or inadvertently parked inches too far into the red, because the person parked next to them wasn’t considerate enough to give them more space.
A dear friend of mine, who also lost her job recently, was ticketed because her bumper was slightly in the blue handicapped zone. A single mother, struggling to pay her rent each month, lost her appeal, now has to pay hundreds of dollars, and is not allowed to do community service. Shame on her for behavior that dictates her responsibility.
The city can always hire poverty pimps and SMRR board members to push paper, and foster dependency for the homeless, rather than hiring the homeless. Especially since some city contractors hire undocumented workers and increase their profits even more. Meanwhile construction continues all over the City, and more money can flow into campaign coffers. Uh uh…
Poor Infiniti Motors, no longer able to sell cars that contaminate the air. On the bright side, we won’t need the beautiful Ficus that used to be in front of NRDC, to replace the toxins in the air, AND we can still borrow from that MTBE settlement, to replace the gasoline tax decline. Uh uh…
Of course the decrease in maintenance won’t affect the most vulnerable residents; just the tourist areas? Like deputy city manager, Polachek, says, “a very surgical approach”. Uh uh….
Jonathan Mann
Santa Monica
310.664-3712
