Thursday, October 26, 2006
I Was Being Sarcastic
I don't think that the city's firefighters are greedy bastards. I don't know how any city employees are paid relative to their counterparts in other cities. I know that most were underpaid prior to Katrina, but even that was exaggerated. Now that so many lower level employees have been laid off, I'm really curious. Salary figures for police officers and firefighters can be even more misleading, because of state supplemental pay. To my knowledge, only police officers, firefighters and teachers receive it and I assume that at least some other states have something similar. Misleading comparisons can easily be made if state pay is included for one city and not the comparison city.
When the issue of pay raises first came up, the city's estimated costs of $3.1M for the remainder of this year and $11M for next year immediately struck me as "off." When Bruce Eggler covered the issue, he didn't bother with high school math, he just pointed out that the mayor ignored half of the equation. So I was little disappointed that Frank Donze took such a suspicious figure at face value. But this weekend, I'll just redo the math, sort through the facts and point why everybody should be disturbed by the council's handling of the matter. Then I'll drop the subject.
When the issue of pay raises first came up, the city's estimated costs of $3.1M for the remainder of this year and $11M for next year immediately struck me as "off." When Bruce Eggler covered the issue, he didn't bother with high school math, he just pointed out that the mayor ignored half of the equation. So I was little disappointed that Frank Donze took such a suspicious figure at face value. But this weekend, I'll just redo the math, sort through the facts and point why everybody should be disturbed by the council's handling of the matter. Then I'll drop the subject.
