Research and letter by John H. Detweiler - submitted to the Corvallis Gazette-Times 3/21/2011 (Published by the GT on 3/25/2011 as Letter: Passing city’s levy won’t solve Corvallis’ real fiscal problems.
- The levy that will appear on the May ballot will not solve our budget problems. Local households and local business cannot support our local government. Therefore we must reduce costs. Personnel costs, amounting to 55% of current costs, are good place to start.
The mean total compensation (salary and benefits) per full time equivalent for the FY 10-11 budget year is $100,000. In five years, the mean total compensation has gone from $80,000 to $100,000. The total salary and benefits increases over this period are: 5.29% and 7.44% per year respectively.
In 2008, the ratios of Corvallis employee salary to Corvallis citizen salary and Salem government worker salary were 1.57 and 1.31 respectively -- higher than I had thought they would be. The notion in setting pay rates is to pay sufficient compensation to attract and retain qualified competent employees. The total package does not have to be excessive.
Negotiations need to be conducted with our unions to constrain and reduce total compensation. And, if we have to take a strike, so be it. If reasonable contracts cannot be worked out, we can contract with private business to perform the commercially oriented functions and lay off employees - foregoing their services -- we can't afford. Details and the sources of these numbers can be found at www.peak.org/~detweij.
This levy, and the ones that will be required in the future if we don't get our costs under control, will not solve our budget problems. Join thinking citizens in voting against this levy.
John H. Detweiler
Corvallis
www.peak.org/~detweij
.jpg)
Or, Join citizens who realize that services cost money. The services that will be closed if the levy doesn't pass are valuable to this community. Many of the activities at Osborne like swim meets and other competitions bring in the range of 1.5 million in revenue to city business. J. Detweiler seems to be very short sighted here.
ReplyDeleteWork on getting better administrators into office or move if you hate Corvallis.