During a 30 minute phone call (screaming match) with Mike White last month over the $100,000.00 Azbell Electronics debacle, other issues came up. Like how overpaid our city employees are and how they seem to get an automatic raise every single year, when those of us in the private sector (who pay their bloated salaries) do not.
Now, before I begin shitting on heads, I’ll say I’ve always considered Mike to be one of the sane voices on city council. He actually runs a successful business and understands the value of a dollar. Thus, he is always voting NO to the plethora of moronic ideas coming out of that group. Hopefully he will vote NO on the latest idiotic idea of a city recycling program, but I digress.
When I was bitching about the fact that we spend a LOT of money on a city manager AND and ASSISTANT city manager, he started laying into me that “we need to pay a lot because if we don’t, the city down the street will!!”. I heard this same bullshit argument when I complained about the massive amount of money being spent on Christmas lights a few years ago. The explanation I got was “they spend a lot more than that in Marble Falls!”
I don’t care what they spend on Christmas lights in Marble Falls. Nor do I care what they pay their policemen or firemen or their city manager. Lampasas is not Marble Falls. Not even close. So to justify bloated salaries because “Marble Falls does it,” is the height of idiocy.
The cost of living is much lower in Lampasas and the employment opportunities are much worse. Ergo, you pay what you need to attract a person who can do the job – not what Marble Falls is paying for that job.
Here is your proof:
Cost of living and employment opportunities in Lampasas
versus
Cost of living and employment opportunities in Marble Falls
The average person in Lampasas earns about $27,000 per year and 21% of the city lives below the poverty line. There is no excuse for paying city “workers” $70,000 or $100,000 per year. Many of these “workers”, like Monica Wright, would be scanning groceries at HEB for $25,000 per year if she wasn’t “working” at city hall.
But wait!! It gets worse!
Because when a city “worker” says they ‘only’ make $45,000 per year, they are conveniently leaving out all the benefits. The city also pays their health insurance, which can be up to $15,000 per year. They also put away another $15,000 or so for their pension! So they are not costing the taxpayer $45,000 per year. They are costing us more like $75,000 per year. All to sit on ass in an air-conditioned office and tell people like me, by email, to buzz off when I ask too many questions. Great work if you can find it! Who do I fellate for that job??
But that’s not enough. They think they should get a 2% raise every single year. This goes along with their overtime pay, “longevity pay” (yes, they get paid a bonus just for being there a long time), and weeks of paid vacation. Add it all up, and a lot of these clowns are making over $50 for every hour of ‘work’ they spend dicking around on their computers.
*NOTE*: All of the above guesstimates of employee cost are taken from the city budget. Of course, they refuse to tell me what anybody actually makes so I have to deduce these numbers from the budget. I DO know that a year or two ago, they wanted a 1% bonus, which a city council member said would cost the taxpayers another $60,000 – which means the city employee total employee salary number was somewhere in the area of $6,000,000.00 per year. That’s SIX MILLION. How many employees does that cover? No idea. They refuse to say.