Second presentation to Board of Supervisors, 6 March, 2007

This second presentation to the Board of Supervisors was read during the regular meeting in Downieville in response to an agenda item where the Supervisors were discussing the proposed salary raises for the County Department Heads. During and after the meeting, both the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and the Director of Transportation and Planning castigated the citizens who were present. They asserted themselves to be "appalled, disgusted and threatened" by our attempt to voice our opinions on how the County spends our tax dollars. While we made a brief statement that a closer reading of our letters would evidence no threats and that our comments had been much more civil than anything that had been utter by a County official, the third posting in this series responds, formally, to this behavior. This letter was published in the Sierra Booster and the Mountain Messenger.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Board of Supervisors,

I come before you today to provide an update on citizen activity regarding the pending proposal from the Sierra County Department heads for a salary and benefits increase.

I continue to represent concerned citizens of Sierra County and we continue to gather signatures supporting the position that the current MOU be maintained and that no increase in salary or benefits be negotiated with the County Dept. Heads. Our opinion is that any raise in salary and/or benefits is fiscally irresponsible. Several more letters to this effect from other citizens have appeared in the Sierra Booster. To our knowledge, no letters have appeared supporting an increase. Of particular note is that we have also been contacted by several county employees who were unwilling to sign the letter for fear of retribution, but who were vocal in their support of the position expressed in our letter.

While one story appeared in a local newspaper in favor of the raises, the level of inaccuracies and poor reporting bear some scrutiny. One can only imagine the fuzzy logic or new math employed by the individual in that paper reporting that “the annual cost to the general fund will be slightly more than $30,000.” (Please note that this error was acknowledged by the Board of Supervisors prior to my statement. The figure of $31,000 was only for 6 months.)

While we were, previously, content to focus on salary and benefits as a way to keep clarity around the situation, we will, if necessary, delve into the additional economic impacts presented by the MOU. These are significant when we consider dept. heads that may be on the verge of retiring. For example, department heads who retire or leave county service after only 10 years of service receive fully paid premiums on their health insurance until the age of 65. For certain department heads, this means that we, the taxpayers, could pay up to $1,000/month for several years for a single individual. We invite the local paper to do the math on that.

Also not previously discussed in this forum are the longevity increases received after 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 15 and 20 years of service. Nor have we addressed the retirement contributions included in the MOU. We assert and are prepared to publish statistics that Sierra County’s scales of compensation in these areas are on par with some of the highest rates paid by large corporations in this country. Impressive for the second least populated county in CA. We are mortgaging the future solvency of this county and for what?

What are we getting in return? The same local paper asserted that “Sierra County requires a knowledge and expertise rare in comparable positions “because we aren’t big enough to hire help, a manager must know every nut and bolt of his department. In addition, each shoulders chores outside the official description.” Consequently, we decided to gather data to see if this could be demonstrated.

To date, we are compiling and documenting a list of instances where this is not true. Some citizens and public agencies in this county are not getting their money’s worth now. A raise in the face of the examples we are following would only be adding insult to injury. We will be providing this data at a future time should it become necessary. We have not yet decided whether we should publish it at the public hearing in Loyalton or wait for the outcome of the vote on this matter. We are confident that once even the few examples that we are documenting are published, some of the county’s department head’s least concern will be whether they receive raises. Not in every case, certainly, but since this is what amounts to a collective bargaining situation, we feel that we must treat every one of the dept. heads as part of the group.

One point that the local paper made that rings true is “Many of the current crop of department heads are so firmly rooted in their jobs and the community that there is little risk of losing them.” Given the salaries and benefits that they are currently receiving, none of the citizens involved in this effort are surprised that they don’t want to leave. 4 out of the 9 newly elected department heads were elected from within their departments. This fact completely contradicts any purported arguments about the difficulty of retaining expertise in the county. On the contrary, that statistic alone is higher than job retention in almost any private business sector, a typically more competitive environment. .

Further, we have recently submitted this story to the following media outlets:

Bill O’Reilly, of The O’Reilly Factor
The Sacramento Bee
The Center for Investigative Reporting, and
Fox News

We will continue to submit updates to these organizations and to further disseminate our position to other media outlets. Our goal is to send information out to one news agency every day until this matter is satisfactorily resolved. We reiterate our possible consideration of a recall and/or a tax initiative.

In closing, we continue to urge you to do the right thing.

Thank you.

Dan Greenway and Gail M. Ellingwood, Sierra County Residents
Leroy and Marie Silver, Sierra County Residents
Jack and Betty Thatcher, Sierra County Residents
Bert and Marilyn Whittaker, Sierra County Residents