Residents of Olivenhain were out in force tonight at City Hall to speak out against a half-assed, part-time fire station being proposed there.
Olivenhain currently has absolutely horrible fire and ambulance response times, and it's only a matter of time until someone dies because of it. City staff's recommendation to Olivenhain: don't have an emergency during off hours.
Olivenhain residents contribute far more than their fair share to the city in property taxes, and they get virtually nothing in return. Olivenhain would be far better off seceding and going back to the county.
All this debate has been about a trade-off of priorities: Olivenhain lives vs. Cardiff and Leucadia beach and park improvements. But nobody's really raising the biggest issue: that if we didn't have such horrible financial mismanagement at City Hall, there would be a lot more resources to go around for everything. I'll just list a few of the issues:
- city salaries higher than comparable private sector workers
- set-for-life-at-55 pensions
- vast overpayment for Hall Property
- failure to investigate toxic waste cleanup costs before purchasing Hall Property
- library cost overruns
- vast overpayment for Mossy property
- fire castles too grandiose (and cost overruns on top)
It's hard to find a single thing the clowns at City Hall have done right with respect to fiscal stewardship. If they hadn't screwed all this up so badly, we wouldn't be talking about trading off Olivenhain lives for Hall Park development.
UPDATE: OK, I spoke too soon. Lisa Shaffer (a candidate for council in November) and Andrew Audet (sadly not yet a candidate) brought up my points quite eloquently.
UPDATE 2: Olivenhain to get a permanent fire station! No word on where the money is going to come from. Pension reform and bloated payroll reduction, anyone?
A ballot initiative needs to be written and qualified for the ballot that curbs the pension abuse. This City Council will never address it, as it is part of their cronyism power. An example was given of only 5 Encinitas city retirees drawing over $500,000 in pension benefits - what happens as these numbers increase? Mark Muir draws $178,000/year - absolutely obscene! Muir draws more money now than many active workers, and it may soon exceed the Governor's salary if a rollback occurs. This blantant robbery of the civic coffers must stop - we need an initiative!
ReplyDeleteAnd we need to DUMP STOCKS!!!!
and Muir.
DeleteDump them all!!! Yes even Barth. Bang your pots!!!
DeleteUpdate on the upscale Walmart parking: Parking lot has been restriped for many, many compact cars. Some parking spaces even have the word compact on the asphalt. How upscale is that!
ReplyDelete