Experienced Leadership

By Tobin Brinker

The choice is clear- Tobin Brinker is the only candidate standing up for the voters. Pension reform is needed to return basic city services to acceptable levels.

Things did not get better, they got worse. Things got so bad that for the first time in many years we had to make serious cuts to public safety (police and fire). Of course those cuts came after deep cuts to other services like parks and libraries.

As a resident you are probably frustrated by the city's inability to get basic services like fixing potholes and street lights taken care of in a timely manner. You deserve to understand why those basic functions are not being taken care of.

The answer is simple: Furlough days did not save as much money as the city management projected and it greatly reduced productivity by reducing work hours by 10%. Massive lay-offs were necessary to balance the budget. The combination of lay-offs and furloughs has decimated our city work force. That is why things aren't getting done.

Police and fire unions like furloughs because of the nature of their work, they are often called in on overtime so they don't actually lose much pay. Last year 246 police and fire union members earned over $100,000 dollars because of overtime.

I have proposed a simple way to solve the budget problem and put people back to work fixing the problems in our city. San Bernardino needs to immediately return to the bargaining table and scrap the furlough plan and switch to a pension reform model.

Colton Mayor David Zamora was able to accomplish something similar in his short tenure and it went a long way to putting Colton back on track.

Here is how it works; currently the city pays the all of the pension costs, including the employee share. If the city switches to employees paying the employee share (which ranges between 7%-9%) the employees will lose less actual pay then with the furloughs but they would go back to working 40 hour work weeks. Overtime would be reduced to offset the difference.

Unfortunately the unions don't want to switch. The furlough model has an end date and pay will shoot back up when the contract expires. They are still hoping for a quick end to the recession but for the citizens the longer it goes on the further behind city workers will get.

My pension reform plan would start with highest earners (those earning over $100,000 dollars) paying the full employee share. In a perfect world we would try to phase it in for the lower paid employees. All of this needs to be negotiated with the unions and I respect the negotiation process but I also think residents have a right to know what is happening and why.