The Road to Potential City Bankruptcy
When my family moved to Vallejo in 1960, Vallejo had been honored nationally as an “All American City” which meant it was an extremely desireable city of its size in which to live. There was a great deal of pride in our city. Every police car had the shield and words “All American City” on it. The Vallejo Times Herald and the Evening News Chronicle showed the pride in the city on nearly every page bragging of its honor as an “All American City.” We were the Home of Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the oldest shipyard on the west coast.
Now we are in the news nationally as one of the first cities on the verge of declaring bankruptcy! What happened?
In 1996 Mare Island closed much to the shock of everyone. It closed along with many other bases in California during the 90’s. It was a huge loss for businesses as well as the citizens of Vallejo who had been employed there. During that declining real estate market during the 90’s, prices fell to rock bottom due not only to foreclosures but also the government buying the homes of transferees and then dumping them on the market. Of course, the city lost tax revenues as a result.
Our police and fire fighter unions were very strong and former city councils were pressured to agree to very expensive contracts. Many raises were delayed as I understand it, due to lack of funds with the city. Some of this gets a bit muddled for me because I had moved out of the area for work for about 12 years. Delaying the inevitable payment to the piper does not make him go away. Some poor decisions were obviously made by past city councils!
Police and Firefighters are very valuable to any city. They put their lives on the line at times during their employment. Back in the old days most of our police and firefighters lived right here in good old Vallejo. That has changed for most. In fact, there have been a fair number of real estate transactions that have failed due to negative attitudes about our city by police officers in particular. Some officers have told potential buyers in great neighborhoods that they would not “live anywhere in Vallejo.”
Those kinds of comments hurt our image a lot, and, personally, I find it offensive that someone who is paid by the good people of the city would “dog” the community that pays their large paychecks so that they can live in “better” communities. When I used to teach school and was responsible for what went on in my classroom, if things got of hand, I had to look in the mirror at the problem. We expect that we will get from employees of the city that for which they have been paid. Where is the responsibility there? …especially when salaries & benefits of these departments take up approximately 80% of the entire budget of the city!
One thing I have learned recently is that when people retire in these departments, it costs the city a ton of money…like over $4Million for a group of police and firefighters who immediately retired when they found out that the city was considering the “B” word. I don’t think even they understood what the cost would be to the city.
I have a friend whose husband retired after 26 years of service at age 50 from another city police department. He gets 80% of his last salary and benefits for the rest of his life. Where else can anyone get that kind of retirement? I am not minimizing the fact that the retired officer every day could have lost his life in service to the community. (There are many young men and women who are risking their lives and some who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq. Their families suffer enormous loss…the soldier got lousy pay and benefits…and they get a folded flag and probably a kind letter from the Commander-in-Chief. But that’s another issue.) How does the aforementioned city hire a replacement for this retired officer, pay the new salary and the retirement (for probably at least 30 years)? Where else can this be done but in government?
I have another friend who happens to have worked for PanAm (remember them?) in the private sector. She too worked for ironically 26 years. She did not risk her life every day, but does that make her so much less important? She is now 62. What will she get for that time? Not much. They declared bankruptcy and away went her retirement. Welcome to the cold hard world.
I had another friend who was killed in the line of duty in Oakland as a police officer. He was just trying to stop a domestic quarrel, and the husband shot and killed him. Taking care of families of fallen police officers and firefighters is definitely something that should be in the plan.
We cannot live by the attitude that we can just raise taxes for public servants to have fantastic benefits and retirements that cannot be had but by the upper management of huge corporations. The rest of us have to put our money away and invest wisely to live well when we can no longer work. There has to be a limit to what the citizens of a community can pay in taxes…especially cities that have people of all ethnicities and social economics…like Vallejo. We have people from everywhere and all social strata including the very poor. Most all of Vallejo’s fine citizenry get along just fine with each other. I have always loved my community here. We do have some problems. We need to look at the causes and focus on the solutions.
There has also been the question: “Will everything fall apart if the city declares bankruptcy?” Orange County made some bad decisions/investments, and they declared bankruptcy back in 1994. Interestingly, Bravo has a TV show called “Real Housewives of Orange County” featuring some spoiled rich women who act like they are still in high school and another network originated “The O.C.” Somehow Orange County made it out of bankruptcy in style, it seems.
I am proud of our city council for trying to reorganize things to avoid bankruptcy first. Hopefully they will be able to come up with a long term solution that will work for the benefit of the entire city and its staff as well. I am also grateful that Joe Tanner, our newer City Manager, has had the courage to stand and say “enough is enough!” when the bank account cannot afford to “pay the piper.” Dodging the issues has not worked. We all know that pretending that problems don’t exist will never make them go away.
It seems we are on the news every step of the way through this. When we come through this successfully, we will be famous!
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