And they did it to themselves: "Expanding salaries, benefits crowd out ambulance addition" - Granite Grok

And they did it to themselves: “Expanding salaries, benefits crowd out ambulance addition”

Concord_Monitor_logoHere’s the question that never gets asked: “When is enough, enough?”  The corollary is “With constant wage and benefit increases when is high, high enough?  At what point do you say ‘Enough!’?”  I recently posted on how Illinois’s budget crisis is so bad that Powerball will no longer let Illinois participate.  Much of the budget problem they are facing is due to underfunded pensions.  Given that it IS Illinois/Chicago land, much of that is due to politicians having made expensive promises to union/govt workers that, wait for it….wait,  that they could never pay off.  And the courts have said, pay it anyways.  Just like California where towns are having to cut services to citizens because they owe too much to govt retirees who are often making more, much more, than the taxpayers paying for it.  It’s almost as if taxpayers exist only to pay for someone else’s wages.

Pravda on the Merrimack has the story in Concord (really, is the Monitor going soft on socialism??) where wages and pension costs are now eating into services that should be delivered (reformatted, emphasis mine):

The prediction was right. Over the course of the day, the page would issue two more warnings that the city’s three ambulances were simultaneously occupied. These familiar posts receive a reliable response: commenters electronically rolling their eyes at the city’s decision not to add an additional ambulance in the upcoming budget year.

But their suggestions that the city council has been stingy on public safety aren’t backed up by the numbers. The budgets of Concord’s police and fire departments have increased by more than $7 million combined – or 37 percent – since 2010.  That expense has been driven almost entirely by salaries and benefits, which on average over that time increased more than $800,000 a year, crowding out new requests for things like ambulances and K-9 units.  After salaries and benefits are paid, the amount left over for each department – less than 6 percent of the bottom line – will be smaller next year than it was eight years ago.

 

In other words, financial crowd-out.  Just as government since the 1930s have crowded out functions that used to be delivered by charities (people directly helping other people), we’re seeing all over the country the same principle internal to government – the runaway labor costs crowding out actual services.  Nice to see that people in government are paid well (or paid VERY well, /sarc) but when those costs start to bite into the ability to actually deliver the services that local govt should be providing, isn’t it time to start saying “enough”?

In the 2018 budget, the cost of benefits for those two departments increased more than $900,000 – upward of 10 percent – over the previous year’s budget, as health insurance became more expensive and the state continued to downshift retirement costs to municipalities.

Did YOU get the equivalent of a 10% raise last year from your employer??  Unless you got a stellar raise, very doubtful.  I will tell you that anytime I tried to rein in the costs in my town (more in the case of town employees shouldering more of their healthcare costs just like, GASP!, we in the private sector), I was met with “but that’s a pay cut!!  You’re heartless!“.

Surprise, I’m back again, locked and loaded, and this time I don’t care – I put taxpayers, who may well have to STRUGGLE to pay their continually rising property taxes, first.  We can only afford what we can afford.  Want more?

You’re free to shop your skills elsewhere.  And is anyone else tired of that old saw “but we have to keep our employees!” as if it was an entitlement and govt was a job-welfare system?  If we in the private sector have had to suck it in, so should they.  This should not be a micro-version of the Hunger Games where taxpayers are not in the Capital.

That alone dwarfs the $772,000-a-year cost of adding an ambulance company, with enough spare change to pay for more than half the cost of the ambulance itself. Andrus said he’s optimistic that an additional ambulance could be added as soon as next year, and he noted that outside the normal budget process, the fire department is receiving $1.4 million for two ambulance replacements and eight other projects through the capital improvement program.

It still is coming out of the taxpayers’ hides.  A question that should be asked – if the govt employees are so hot to trot to have another vehicle, are they willing to slow the rate of their raises, or (God forbid, take a cut!) to make it happen?  How about pitching in some of the dues to all those professional organizations (sometimes triple dipped at the State, National, or international level) and pay for it yourselves?

City Manager Tom Aspell said last month at a budget hearing that his administration is already planning increased resources to maintain the city’s “first-class” emergency response. “Could be next year, could be the year after,” he said. Whenever it happens, it’ll add more staff into the salaries and benefits equation.

Ah yes.  Taxpayers, you are being warned that YOUR standard of living will be decreased so as to maintain theirs.

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