Posted by Michael Haran on Oct 26, 2014
Healdsburg Tribune
10/23/2014
With this year’s elections fast approaching both candidates for the 4th Supervisorial District, James Gore and Deb Fudge, have represented that they possess the knowledge and skills necessary to manage Sonoma County’s public sector and its problems, one of which is the gorilla in the room – unfunded pension liabilities.
With annual pension costs having increased from $25 million in 2002 to $117 million and are expected to grow to $200 million by 2020 with the county’s unfunded liability at about $300 million (PD 10/11/14) even considering water related issues, this is the most pressing issue facing the county’s elected officials.
Now I have no squawk about how much public employees are paid. Even the issues I have about too many county managers isn’t about pay. It is critical that public employees get paid a middle class wage as all the support we can give the middle class is important to stave off the ravages of the growing aristocracy in this country. Without a strong middle class we could go the way of the Middle East – yikes!
It’s the retirement system that’s broke and needs to be fixed. This problem got rooted when public pension became guaranteed and tied to a wage and benefit plan that was intended to compete with the private sector. Back then everyone had a pension and it was felt that in order for the public sector to attract talented professionals they had to offer benefits that were as good, or better, then what was being paid in the private sector. The problem is the public sector pensions are guaranteed while the private sector pensions were/are not and those that didn’t get eliminated have gotten decimated as many corporations switched their employee pensions to 401ks.
Now the situation has reversed with the public sector jobs paying more than most private sector jobs and with benefits including retirement at age 50 to 55 with up to 90% salary and the immoral practice of perk “spiking” (Jerry Brown and the legislature has tried to put a stop to this but several unions have sued to restore the practice).
So what can be done to bring the system back into balance? The only way that retirement benefits can be “unguaranteed” so that they will fluctuate with the market like everyone else’s 401k, is for legislators to amend the state’s retirement system. This, however, is problematic since most elected state officials are “in the pockets” of the powerful public employee unions. Even if a ballot initiative were to pass it would be ruled unconstitutional by California’s Supreme Court and then it would have to go to the U.S. Supreme Court – which may very well happen. This is why Mike McGuire was against the initiative and saw that in order to get any reform the unions would have to agree to change. Many have but it hasn’t been enough to impact the long-term liabilities and more concessions have to be made. As stated in a contemporary economic theory:
“This means that the political, legal, religious and educational systems must be understood dynamically in terms of whether they serve to enhance or to hinder human development. Thus, a system that, at one point in time, may have served a progressive role in society may, because of changes in the possibilities created by new modes of production, come to serve a negative function. Accordingly, it might be quite appropriate and functional for a certain perspective or ideology to dominate the thinking at a given historical moment, while at a later time those same ideas may become unproductive expressions of false consciousness and hegemony.”
The situation is not hopeless if all stakeholders work together and in good faith. This is the problem with politicians signing pledges. They work against good faith and erode the ability to compromise. I do not see how any candidate for elected public office who has pledged allegiance to one party or another could possible take an oath of office without perjuring themselves even before they’ve taken their seat at the dais.
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Posted by Michael Haran on Aug 15, 2014
Fitch Mountain
It hardly seems like a year ago but we recently had our annual Fitch Mountain Association pot-luck and state of affairs at the villa picnic grounds. Donita Proctor opened the get-together by welcoming everyone and promptly introducing 4th District Supervisor Mike McGuire who spoke to us about several issues. This will be Mike’s last FMA attendance as district supervisor as it looks like he is headed to Sacramento as our next state senator.
He started by stating that the county has thus far made over $120m in budget cuts which included the elimination of 520 county employees. The county will have increased its property taxes assessment by over $12m, which will lead to a $21m budget surplus this year. He also said that the county has put approximately $8m into county road repair and construction and that they are looking to put another $100m into road rehabilitation. Funding for the new stripping and road reflectors on South and North Fitch Mountain Road came from a federal grant which included several county roads.
Of local interest McGuire said the county will be putting about $250m into the county park system which will include raising the Memorial Beach dam eight feet and the remodeling of the bathrooms. The project won’t start until after the Memorial Beach bridge repairs are completed sometime next year. We also now have funding in perpetuity a full-time sheriff deputy to patrol holiday activities at Camp Rose and Del Rio. The deal to buy Fitch Mountain for a Sonoma County Open Space Park now 99.8% done said McGuire but, then again, we have been waiting for this since 1992.
McGuire was then happy to report on the success of one of his long-time projects. He and the FMWS Advisory committee have work extremely hard to straighten out what was a very inefficient water situation on Fitch Mountain. Three years ago the lack of maintenance reserves prompted a rate increase of 36% over three years. Prior to the rate increase, the system was nearly bankrupt and now there’s a $198,000 reserve, built up in the last 3 years and we won’t see any rate increases over the next two years. In addition, Fitch Mountain will be purchasing water at a wholesale rate from City of Healdsburg which will save users $300-400k over the next several years. The savings are a result of the City removing the operations and maintenance charges that we had been paying for, but for which the City didn’t provide.
McGuire then got into drought related issues when he said that our U.S. Congressional Reprehensive Jarred Huffman is working to get changes through congress that would separate the Lake Mendocino water reserves from the storage levels of the much smaller Lake Pillsbury. As we all know Lake Mendocino was drained by over 30% at the start of the drought in January of 2013 due to outdated Army Corp of Engineer regulations. He also said that one the engineering designs are complete they will be looking to raise Lake Mendocino’s Coyote dam by 30 feet which would double the lakes 100 acre feet capacity. Unfortunately, it looks like this project is still a good six years out. Lake Mendocino currently has a 10 month reserve with Lake Sonoma at 2.5 years.
Mike finished his talk with an announced change in the flight patterns at the Santa Rosa Airport will now be moved away from Healdsburg and Windsor and that as of August of this year we will all be entitled to two free low-flush toilets (1.6 gal to .8 gal) and free installation.
Donita commented on the fact that Fitch Mountain residences were not saving water. There were 1.240 m gallon used in April and 1.511m gallons used in May. She said this increase is probably due to the seasonal vacation rentals but more needs to be done to conserve water usage. The June figures were not available. There also appears to be an 11.77% water loss somewhere on the mountain. This loss figure is within the EPA guidelines but she suggested that everyone should watch their water bill for over usage and to check their meters. Even though we can’t vote for it an anti-fluoride spokesperson encouraged us to attend a workshop on the matter later in the summer.
Next up were the fire guys. Healdsburg Fire Chief Steve Adams said that by the time you get called on your land-line about a fire on the mountain the situation has probably already gone from containment to evacuation. So he suggest people be vigilant about fire awareness. He also suggested that we sign up with an internet service called NIXEL which automatically notifies subscribers of police and fire announcement in any particular zip code anywhere in the country. The Cal Fire guys said that they have two airplane tankers, a helicopter, five trucks and hand crews available for any fire in their district, which includes Fitch Mountain.
Don and Marilyn McEnhill at Del Rio 1970
The last item on the agenda was from Al Pucci who said that the seasonal dam structure at Del Rio beach was being removed in August at the cost of $282k. The funds came from Del Rio tax assessments and grants. Since the Del Rio summer lake has such an historic connection to our community it will be sad to see it go.
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