This is regarding the ongoing Lompoc city budget review to the $70 milion CalPERs financial dilemma imposed on the city by that organization. The three letters from Misters Grill, Gallanders, and Dettamanti in the Lompoc Record are the typical armchair experts offering their misdirected advice for a solution. None of them know anything about city financing, and consequently think they know more than the paid experts who run the city. City Manager Patrick Wiemiller is an expert on city finance and has proposed a logical plan to get the city out of this terrible predicament for the next 10 years.
Contrary to what Mr. Grill said, the city has made its payments to CalPERs. Unfortunately, three City Council members—Jim Mosby, Victor Vega, and Dirk Starbuck—are not willing to accept an expert’s guidance to solve the problem, but have been exploring optional plans that would totally gut the city of its service programs. Mosby would make all city employees suffer another cut in income of 5 to 6 percent. Remember, these are your neighbors. After hours of wrangling, Councilmember Starbuck began to see the light and realized the weakness of the Mosby approach and voted with Mayor Bob Lingl and Councilmember Jenelle Osborne to consider the three tax solutions at the next city budget meeting.
The city manager gets paid an appropriate salary for a city of 300-plus employees. He is responsible for the finances and spending of the city and for safety with the police and fire under his jurisdiction. He is not paid too much for what he does and no one can do a better job. Mr. Grill would have the city closed down and have no management. This is irrational and is not a solution to this great problem. The employees took a hit in benefits in 2008, from which they have not recovered.
We have before us two choices: The three taxes to pay for CalPERs and maintain city services, or the complete dissolution of the city services as we know it today and loss of many city employees in the process. The glib comments made by the above writers are no solution to this problem. Mr. Mosby and Mr. Vega are no experts in city financing. Let’s remember that peoples’ lives are at issue here both from income and safety. No one in the city is getting paid too much. They are getting paid what other cities pay, and a little less in some cases.
We need to solve this problem now for the next 10 years, not piecemeal like Mosby and Vega would have you see. City Manager Wiemiller lives in the city and will have to pay for any tax increase also, which he sees as the only balance between meeting the CalPERs obligation and keeping city services viable.
This article appears in Jun 29 – Jul 6, 2017.
