Kiss of the Callow Canine

A few weeks ago on the City Council consent calendar, they approved the spending of $2000 as the 2-year stipend for this position. However, no list of responsible bidders was presented nor a 10% contingency for unforeseen costs.

Obviously a scandal was brewing because in early February this memo appeared about how to appoint the Poet Laureate:
http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/CAP/MG7704...

This investigation can be the next cover story for the Indy.
After the one about me, of course....

Poetry Czar Starkey needs to earn those big bucks and start working on some phrases that rhyme with "Transportation and Circulation Committee" and "General Plan Update".

SBPD officer’s negotiated salaries are based on salary comparisons with other comparable cities to Santa Barbara. The job of a police officer is a difficult one thus police officers are well compensated for a job that has many stresses, not just physical dangers. As it stands right now, SBPD’s officer’s salaries are 4.9% below the AVERAGE of comparable cities which means that SBPD officers are paid below average thus there are many agencies that pay significantly more than SBPD in cities which have lower housing costs.

Regardless of your opinion as to how much you think an officer should be paid, the industry standard is based on the free market economy. To single out SBPD officer’s salaries as some great evil shows a complete lack of understanding of how salaries are determined. If you were to greatly reduce SBPD officer’s salaries there would be a mass exodus from the Department as there was in 2005 when 20 officers left in one year, most for better paying agencies where they didn’t have to commute. The City lost a lot of experience, and money, when all of those officers left due to a failure to pay a competitive salary with other comparable agencies.

While some misinformed people may think that Santa Barbara is a paradise where the cops drive around all day with nothing to do but drink coffee and eat doughnuts, the truth is that SB cops deal with, on a daily basis, all of the same social ills that exist in every other city in the country. If you want to get paid what a cop gets paid then test, go to the academy, and then endure the job for 30 years. There is another small segment of the community who are just cop haters, for whatever reason. These are people who have developed some bias against law enforcement and no matter what truth is presented they won’t believe it because they want to live in their world of occupational hate.

I am no fan of the Newspress but, perhaps, they chose to only ask for and print the salaries of non-police officer City employees because they understand the truths about an officer’s salary and chose to not participate in an effort to demean police officers by documenting their salaries as if the officers were doing something wrong by, as in the case with SBPD, accepting a below average salary.

Good and likely accurate facts, TheFacts, but I took the Poodle's comparison to be less about whether police & firefighters deserved what they are paid, but rather the NP didn't "out" the salaries because of the fear of public and union backlash.

Your thoughts equally obtain to the wrongly persecuted -- but easier to target -- Parks & Rec staff. That is, the News-Press chose to print the salaries of non-police (and fire) employees ONLY because they are ignorant of the skills, education, and experience necessary to accomplish the jobs they so easily dismiss, demean, and diminish.

Of further interest is the truly amateur and shallow editorial up-chucking produced by Travis Armstrong, the editorialist. His writing skills are piss-worthy, dependent on innuendo, half-truths, paranoia, and the bats flying within his noggin.

Is their a more isolated and buggy commentator in Santa Barbara not under protective custody? His admixture of hissy-fits and rants divorced from reality is usually found in obscure, vanity-press imprints from fringe-groups, not in the daily paper of a literate community.

"the industry standard is based on the free market economy"

This is patently UN-Factual. There is no open bidding for police services. President Reagan fired PATCO and the world didn't fall apart.

The various police/fire unions have held municipalities hostage for decades using their strong arm tatics.

Let's fire the unions 100%.

Call in the Cal National Guard for temporary police service and then open up the bidding to ex service MPs, and all others who'd like a chance and let them bid for the job based on the lowest $/hr bids winning. Retirement plans and benefits will be contribution based like the commercial world and not the ruiness guraunteed defined benefits that are holdovers from a different time and place.

Sweeping layoffs of government employees are needed to prevent New York going bankrupt, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.
Bloomberg, who is in tense negotiations with municipal workers' unions, said an extra 7,000 jobs would have to go unless major reductions are made in employee benefits.

"We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city," he said in comments broadcast on NY1 television.

No, bidding wouldn’t work.

If police service were put out to bid that means that a variety of entities would have to exist which already had a pool of skilled, trained, and experienced personnel ready to go. What other entity exists that could under-bid the current officers and, if they won the contract, immediately relieve the 140 SBPD cops and go right into the Station and pick up on the homicide investigations, rape investigations, gang investigations, patrol services, etc.?

You say the military – first there are laws that exist that prohibit the military from taking over civilian police services but, if you got beyond that, military personnel are trained to kill people and destroy things. Police service requires a completely different skill set from military service – no way would a military reservist, or regular, be capable of running complex criminal investigations. The military couldn’t do it. How about contracting out to the Sherriff? Nope, that wouldn’t work either – they get paid just about the same as SBPD officers – their wages are determined the same way – market forces.

Bottom line – the standard axiom exists – you get what you pay for. The lowest bidder for police services would provide lousy service. Law Enforcement professionals provide a very unique service. The job is difficult and stressful and the community, justifiably, has high expectations for their law enforcement professionals. The nature of the job demands a good salary – market forces.

When the Police Association enters negotiations with the City, salary surveys are produced to see where the officer’s salaries sit compared to other agencies. Then discussions start as to where the salary needs to be to remain competitive and to keep up with inflation. After a lot of calculations, time, and talking, SBPD officers typically receive the AVERAGE police officers salary – not the top, not the best, the average of what the others make. This is a fair and reasonable method of determining salary and this is also how the private sector determines its’ salaries.

So, you can go ahead and disparage unions all you want but the methods of determining SBPD officer’s salaries are the same as many other employees in the country, and, when you look at the duties/responsibilities of a police officer, their salary is fair and reasonable in this economy.

Binky: If you keep that up, you WON'T be invited to the News-Press christmas party this year.

It's not about base salaries, it's about the "built-in" OT hours that throw the budget off. The real $$ amount of compensation to our officers isn't anywhere near the base salaries used in the above-mentioned comparisons.

I'm sure the Snooze-Press has no idea what I'm talking about.

There are no "built-in" OT hours for police officers. Police Officers would like to get off work on-time and go home to their families but criminals don't coordinate their activities with police officers' shifts so overtime occurs. It is a fact of life in police work and overtime compensation for SBPD officers is completely in line with the industry standard for the occupation of an officer.

Additionally, police officers have no control over court. When subpoenas are issued, officers have to show up regardless if they had a day-off planned with the family or they just got off-duty from a graveyard shift and haven't had any sleep ... they have to miss their sleep to go to court (remember while you were enjoying your sleep during normal human being sleep hours the officer was driving around in the middle of the night working to make it safer for you to sleep.)

When homicides or other extremely serious crimes occur, the detectives must be called in, regardless of the day of week or hour of day. In an effort to catch the murderer or other criminal the detectives will often work 24 to 36 hours straight in an all out effort to solve the senseless hurting or killing of a human being. This is grueling work and requires profound dedication and skill to work these cases with no sleep or rest.

So you think these crime fighters are pulling the wool over the public's eyes HAVING to work this overtime?!?

There are overtime details that the officers can put in to work for such as movie shoots, traffic control for sporting events, etc. These overtime details are paid for by the organization that has contracted with the City for the event thus no taxpayer dollars pay the officer's overtime salary for these events.

Labor law allows for overtime pay. To single out a police officer for making overtime pay, particularly when the overtime is mandatory and usually negatively impacts the officer's family life, and say the officer is committing some great evil by making this additional money above his/her base salary shows a deep misunderstanding of the sacrifices an officer makes to provide police services to this City. It is insulting to an officer to think that you believe that fair compensation of overtime is wrong. Other employees make overtime, why do you believe some malfeasance is occurring because a police officer makes overtime? Because it may add up to a lot of money? Then you are simply envious of the money and you don’t care that the officer EARNS that money OR you think that the officer should work for free to save the City money. Where is the reasonableness in thinking that an officer should work for free? Or do you just hate cops and think that they should be treated as unreasonably as possible because you don’t care about their efforts to try to keep the peace in this City.