Candidate for
City Treasurer; City of Redondo Beach

Steve Diels wants to reform the Redondo Beach Treasurer's office. With your tax dollars at stake, you deserve to know why. The Treasurer's small department burdens you and I with a staggering half-million dollar bill every year. The Treasurer's bloated annual salary alone costs us $116,000. That wastes money needed for more police and better schools. Steve has committed to saving us as much as $300,000 annually by drastically reducing the Treasurer's salary and adopting overdue reforms. This is an outline of the reform plan: For starters, the cost of operations. The treasurer's office used to be funded by returns from the portfolio investments. Revenue from the portfolio no longer covers the cost of the department. Therefore other revenue sources are subsidizing the high cost of the department including the bloated salary of the Treasurer -- $116K plus benefits! Management of the Portfolio has recently been handed off to professional investors by the Acting Treasurer. Now that task is removed as a task of the Treasurer. The portfolio needs professional oversight, but not in-house administration, buying and trading. Second; the Treasurer's salary should be drastically reduced to bring the department into balance. Third, oversight and audits should be increased. Fourth, duties that belong to the finance department should remain there. The Treasurer is not the Director of Finance. We already have a Director of Finance at $100k+ salary. The job of the Treasurer is to look after the treasury. That is: cash, investments and accounts receivable. We can do a better job of collections and audits of accounts receivable. Proper division of duties and oversight will streamline and provide checks and balances for the overall financial operations of the city. My proposals are fiscally responsible and will save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. I hope you agree. Please support my efforts to save the city money and increase oversight.

There is no rational reason why the Treasurer deserves $116K of the resident's money. Reducing other employee salaries to justify the bloated Treasurer's salary is not a viable option. There is no reason to justify such a high Treasurer's salary. Reform, not cronyism, is necessary in the treasurer's office.