Show Me the Money
In a recent column, we discussed the fact the toll road has consultants who earn $185 an hour to read newspaper columns like this one. That seemed like a pretty rich deal until a reader pointed out the Transparent California website. Laguna’s salaries can be found here: transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/laguna-beach.
Those emails that come to the Wetsuit Worldwide Headquarters with the heading, “Have you seen this?” are the best. Please keep them coming.
So as not to spoil the experience for you, let’s just touch on some of the more egregious examples of wasteful spending practices to be found on this site. There are more $300,000 a year cops and firefighters than you can shake a stick at. Fire captains, who are in charge of one fire truck and the two other crew members who man it, routinely make more than the city manager, who supervises an entire city.
Most of them get to this august sum through the largess of overtime earnings that can often exceed their base pay. This starts to get pretty pricey when you recognize that after 30 years of service, a firefighter who started their career at 21 years old could retire at 51 years old with a pension of 90 percent of their earnings.
One of Laguna’s more outstanding efforts at overpaying the common job is the gardener who earns $138,000 a year. Does anybody think the Irvine Company is spending that kind of money for its gardeners at the Crystal Cove Center? They don’t use employees for those tasks. They’ve long understood the fact independent contractors are cheaper and come with no direct pension obligations. Let’s not even dwell too much on how nice their landscaping looks compared to our parks.
One could argue about the safety of the concept of hiring outside contract firefighters and cops. There certainly are important policy considerations involved in contracting out those government functions. Those considerations are not so apparent for the task of mowing the lawn.
A common city manager excuse for keeping these tasks performed by employees rather than contractors, is the alleged need to maintain a flexible pool of workers for response to an emergency. Somehow cities like Laguna Niguel have figured this challenge out and almost exclusively use outside contractors to provide a wide range of municipal services.
They recognize the contractor’s labor hired to mow the lawn can’t do so in a flood. Those workers would be just as happy to shovel up a debris flow as a city employee, just for a lot less money.
J.J. Gasparotti moved to Laguna Beach with his family when he was 11 years old. He has loved it ever since.
