Imagine what would happen if you walked into your boss’s office and told him that you’re planning to retire at age 50, and you want an annual pension at nearly full salary for the rest of your life – perhaps another 30 or more years – while you lounge around at home or perhaps get another job. He would probably laugh you out of his office. And your boss would be right.
But that’s exactly the situation in the East Contra Costa Fire Protection District, which wants to raise your taxes by $2,200 over the next 10 years (the $197 tax could increase as much as 3 percent annually with inflation).
It might be worth it if all of that money actually provided more fire protection. But a good chunk of it will go to retirees who can quit at 50 with nearly full pay – none of whom will show up if your house is on fire.
Retirement costs are currently $2.5 million, a 26-percent increase from last year. They will rise another 30 percent in the next three years to $3.2 million. At that point a quarter of the budget will go just for retirement expenses. The district had a $21.2 million unfunded liability as of the end of 2010, fourth highest out of 15 special districts in the county.
Retirement expenses are so high because the district’s pensions are significantly greater in many cases than the earnings of taxpayers. It’s calculated based on 3 percent of salary for each year worked. That equates to 90 percent of earnings for someone who started at 20 and retired at 50.
And that works out to a nice pension indeed. The average firefighter earns about $73,000 in base salary, overtime and other earnings. However, there aren’t that many firefighters in this top-heavy district, just 12. There are 15 fire engineers, who average about $91,000 in total earnings. And there are 16 fire captains, who average $87,000. At the very top are the three battalion chiefs, who average $115,000, and the chief, who enjoys $138,000.
As a result, a firefighter who puts in 30 years and retires at age 50 might receive $65,000 every year for the rest of his life. A retired fire engineer might get $82,000 annually, a retired fire captain might receive $78,000/year, a battalion chief might retire on $103,000 per year and the retired chief would have to get by on $124,000 each year for the rest of his retirement. Retiree medical benefits are an added bonus.
With these generous benefits, is it any wonder that, despite this tax hike bringing in an extra $100 million to the district in the next 10 years, the budget is projected to once again be operating at a deficit in just four years? In 2016 the district will be spending $400,000 more than it’s taking in. The fiscal hemorrhaging will continue every year after that, accumulating $2.5 million in deficit spending by the time the tax hike expires in 10 years. Any guess on whether they’ll be asking for an even larger tax hike at that point?
The district doesn’t have a revenue problem – it has a spending problem. Raising the retirement age, adjusting the top-heavy staffing and reducing or eliminating overtime could save the district millions of dollars each year. That money could be used to hire more full-time and paid-on-call firefighters and volunteers.
With gas and food prices skyrocketing, with most taxpayer salaries stagnant and many businesses struggling, this is the wrong time to suck $2,200 out of our wallets and $100 million out of the local economy for a mismanaged government district.
Dave Roberts
Oakley
Take your 78 hours per week and be specific.
How many of those hours are base/normal hours?
How many are overtime hours?
How much money is paid for those base/normal hours?
How much money is paid for the OT hours?
What is the multiplier paid for OT hours over and above the base/normal rate?
Thanks!
anything over that is overtime which is usually 24 hrs at a time
base pay hourly is $17 and some change
overtime is time and a half
But the overall package when pensions and medical benefits are involved is overly generous.
http://www.calculateyourpublicpension.com/CA/
Given 25 years of service and retirement at 50 with a final annual pay rate of $70K this firefighters Pension Benefit is
Monthly: $4,375
Annual: $52,500
If this pension is such a burden for the firefighters then we should throw it out and let them contribute to Social Security like the rest of us.
BTW, I would need $1,096,900 cash at that same retirement age to yield the same annual income as this public pension. And I would need to come up with that bucket of money without any help from the taxpayers.
The fire and public safety system needs to be overhauled. The problem with this tax it will allow the politicians and union to the kick the can down the road without making the necessary structural corrections. The firefighters and the public deserve better.
http://thepress.net/view/full_story/18635981/article-Wages-and-retirement-in-the-fire-district-?instance=top_stories2
Case in point: He quotes a Calpers study that says life expectancy for firefighters is slightly higher that the average Calpers retiree, and he goes on repeatedly about the potential for someone to retire at 50 with 90 percent pay.
But he failed to mention that the VERY SAME CALPERS REPORT he uses on the life expectancy issue debunks his 90% retirement comment. That happens with only ONE PERCENT of retirees. I quote the report:
"To get 30 years and retirement at age 50, one would need to start at age 20. Cal PERS found that the average age of entry for people who got 3% at 50 was 28. Overall just 34% of public safety officials accrued 30 years or more of service and almost all of them retired after the age of 53. In fact only 1% of safety employees retire at age 50 with a benefit of 90% of final compensation."
Mr. Roberts also used overtime such as your neighbor's grandson earns and used it to calculate what the retirement payouts would be, but in reality retirement is only figured on salary, not salary plus OT. Just two of the more obvious ways Mr. Roberts has skewed reality.
So this is what I know from just observing the real world…..
Other FD’s challenged with covering a lot of sq mi and diverse areas deploy not just one staffing model…they mix it up based on specific needs/circumstances and they seem to employ more of a make it happen approach than I am reading ECCFPD will do when this new tax fails.
With most FD calls being BLS medical (and other no danger calls, no running into burning buildings) and with everyone saying seconds count, and with AMR in the mix, and with there being plenty of fire engines, and with there being plenty of fire stations….. it would seem logical to spread the crews out to keep the BLS times to a minimum. This is definitely used in other places to get a first responder to each call ASAP for basic life support where time does matter and for starting the attack on other situations.
I actually took the opportunity today to speak to a full time firefighter who staffs a one person station. I asked him if he felt compromised and he said no way, he felt his deployment was beneficial and could really make a difference in a range of situations. He went into some detail and I was impressed with how well thought out his situation was.
So I know right now many sharp minds are cranking out all the reasons this can’t work in CCC. Hey try this for once….try thinking of a few reasons it could work and how under a less than optimum situation this FD could adopt customary practices successfully employed all over the country to put BLS responders in the best position to quickly respond.
Sure, I know keeping a station open for a one person crew would incur a utility bill and maybe a captain's wage. I bet if Bethel Island (or byron or morgan, or knighteson, or BW#2, or DB#2) could keep one person on duty in the local station by the community simply raising money to pay the utility bill…..no doubt it would happen within days and the little bit of money needed for utility bills would keep on flowing. And clearly taking a one person slot at standard pay is better than not having a job at all (that is if working is the real goal).
Sooner or later both county FD’s will need to be shut down and a new one started….simple math says so, solvency can not be achieved in any other acceptable way. No way around it unless you want everyone to just start signing over their pay checks to the county. A NO VOTE will speed up the process and that is a good thing. In the mean time more creative deployments, as used in many other places, should be carefully evaluated and given a fair chance for consideration.
It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing, give-us-$2,200-or-you-may-die approach.
This is more of what I want! I want people with no background, baseline, education, or experience making important policy decisions!
You can't include overtime and "other pay" in the calculation for pensions. It isn't used. You cherry picked stats out of that CALPERS document. Go back and look up the life expectancy of a 30 year old fire fighter, as an example. But raising the retirement age? First of all, what does that mean since there is no official retirement age? Did you notice that disability/workmens comp claims for fire fighters climb by 700% between the ages of 50 and 55? That's in your CALPERS paper too. How high do you think it might go if you try to force people to stay until 60 or 65? Disability is guaranteed pay for life, if you didn't know. If that's an idea for cost savings, I think it's a bad one.
Somebody mentioned it already below, but the lack of understanding of command structure is puzzling. It's no different in any organization, public or private. Or the military. People take entry level positions in these in all walks of life. Through training they take on new roles, with new titles and pretty common that they get pay raises with those new skills. Why do you treat that as a foreign concept in the fire department? Is it supposed to be starting wage and you are stuck there for your entire career? Can you say that and be serious?
No question that pensions have been a hot button issue. Even the fire fighters and the union recognize changes will need to be made. But you aren't going to solve your short term budget problems with that. Pension changes take years if not decades to show a meaningful change on the balance sheets. Just like the 3@50 thing which is barely 10 years old here. A chage to 2 or 2.5@55 won't really start to save money until maybe 2020.
Mr. Roberts, your idea of laying off or firing higher paid staff with the expressed intent of higher cheaper wage replacements is illegal. Certainly by Calif statutes, if not federal. Labor laws are on the books to prevent just such abuses. More confusing is your math. You talk about 31 of these higher paid staff. 31 x $18,000, which is the highest pay differential you noted, doesn't even get you $600,000 savings. But you said repeatedly that plugs the $4.5 million dollar budget hole? You even said that would set up the possibility of higher more staff. I really wonder how or who did your math. Is that some talking point the Contra Costa Taxpayers Assoc is distributing as well? Since you are one of 3 authors of the opposition statement. That's a horrible piece of misinformation that could cause people to make a bad decision at the ballot box. Are you indemnifying the ratepayers in the district for trying to lead them down this path? Shouldn't you and the CCTPA be shouldering responsibility for any such misinformation you put out like this? Your opinions have much greater reach than the average Joe's.
Lastly, for those who are insisting the Paramedic thing is duplication, that is also not true. To start with, taxpayers don't pay for the service provided by American Medical. If someone is looking at their bill and pointing to the $10 parcel fee, that doesn't go to American. Did you also know that when the fire department begins to take on Advanced Life Support and the need for these quick response vehicles goes away, that American is required to pay the County the value of them? Paramedics for this department might cost between $400-$700,000 per year, but when the American quick response vehicles are retired, the county recoups over $1,200,000 in funds from American. Taxpayers overall could actually save over half a million dollars overall.
Before you dismiss me out of hand or attack me, call the EMS office tomorrow and ask. This isn't my opinion. Just relating what I've read. Call the Chief or call your Supervisor to verify some of this other information. But please, don't buy some of the poor quality stuff that is being posted here. I don't know where these folks are getting this or why, but this is really bad info.
The meeting this next week is not theater. This is serious. The district has just $8,000,000 in revenue. There two scenarios to consider are a 3 station or a 4 station. Both will leave all of Knightsen, Bethel Island and Morgan Territories without local fire coverage. The 3 station leaves a sizeable portion of Brentwood outside a critical 5 mile zone. This is not people bluffing here. You can't operate a 6 station fire department with only 3 stations worth of money.
I have to laugh at your comment about paramedics. You say the county recoups over $1,200,000 in funds from American. The ECCFPD only gets $35,000 dollars of that. So are you saying we are going to pay more taxes to the fire district so the county can spend the same taxes we already pay them for the same service? The paramedic thing is a union power grab with our tax money. Your sky is falling attitude is pretty standard when the government can't manage the huge dollars they already get.
Let us deconstruct a little of what you said. You have implied in your recent post and several before that you pay for Paramedics already. The fact is you do not. The county does not pay American Medical for their paramedic services. The county does not pay them for the quick response vehicles either. So your tax dollars are not going to pay for that existing service. What the $10 per parcel annual fee goes to is support services. Dispatch and communications, training and oversight of the ALS program. Those services are independent of who is delivering the ALS. Whether it is American or the fire department, those support services will remain necessary. But you did state pretty clearly your belief that you somehow pay through general fund dollars for the Paramedics themselves. I simply pointed out that there is a scenario set in writing that would funnel money back to that same general fund. In other words, there is no possibility of duplication of services that multiple people here have claimed would take place.
You have engaged in a circular argument, whether intentional or because you don’t understand how the funding is accomplished. You cannot complain about a claimed depletion of general fund money when I just showed you that it will be recovered and at a higher figure than what the fire department solution will cost. I am going to post one paragraph from a report I have in my hand from county’s EMS department. This will clearly show that we do not pay for the existing paramedics. Not only that, but by moving to fire department based paramedics we _could_ actually gain funding from county’s EMS to the tune of $30,000 per engine to offset our costs. Costs which I have read are estimated to be $65,000 per engine. That is what ConFire quoted to Pinole last year to add advanced life support to their engines. That means the incremental cost to district rate payers could be less than $200,000 to get a paramedic on each of the current 6 engines in our district.
The section of the report is as follows:
“In 1998, following implementation of a pilot paramedic program by Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, the Board of Supervisors directed the Health Services Department and Contra Costa County Fire to “continue working cooperatively with AMR [American Medical Response] and with other fire agencies within the county to determine the feasibility of further integration of public and private paramedic services, conditioned on the identification of new or existing funding sources.” (Board of Supervisors, Nov. 3, 1998) This led to an EMS system redesign plan approved by the Board of Supervisors on May 18, 2004. The plan served as the basis for a November 2004 request for proposal (RFP) for emergency ambulance services in those areas of the county served by AMR. As part of that RFP, the Measure H paramedic subsidy for paramedic ambulance services (provided by AMR and by Moraga-Orinda Fire) was eliminated and those funds were shifted to support fire-based paramedic first responder services and efforts to assure timely access to paramedic care for communities without fire-based paramedics. The funds made available by eliminating the ambulance subsidy enabled the County to commit funding of fire paramedic programs at $30,000 annually per engine, with some additional funding for medical oversight as required by statute (Title 22) and as provided by the fire services and by the County EMS Agency.”
If you question the validity of what I am stating, I recommend that you get on the phone to Pat Frost at the county’s EMS department tomorrow and ask for the full report.
Millie, I have seen you post either here or on another forum suggesting you are a Bethel Island resident on a fixed income. Aren’t you the least bit concerned that a vote is about to take place which will eliminate your fire engine and quick response vehicle on July 15? Outside of the Morgan Territories, Bethel Island is most at risk here. You are on an island. In a major natural disaster you could be completely isolated from emergency response teams. That doesn’t trouble you as a senior? I think you have even attacked the suggestion of higher insurance costs. Do you really think your insurance company won’t look at that and put you in a higher risk category in that situation?
We shouldn't play some cat and mouse game with a vital service. Can you explain to those of us scratching our heads how you are going to avert disaster if we close 3 stations to include the one closest to you? This is not scare tactics or theater. This is a real vote about to take place that is going to impact you even more than it’s going to impact me.
1) Vote yes on Measure $ and support the current method of operation, which has led to years of deficit spending, reduced staffing, a campaign for a $2,200 tax increase and further deficit spending starting in 2016 and continuing through 2022 when an even larger tax hike will be necessary.
2) Or they can vote no on Measure $ and force the district to make fundamental changes in its method of operation that would stop the deficit spending for now and the future.
The choice is that simple. Nobody is saying it won't be difficult and painful for the district. But, just as taxpayers have had to tighten their belts during this never-ending recession, it's necessary that the district do so as well.
Right now the district is on a one-way street to oblivion. Retirement expenses rose 26% this year. They will increase another 30% in the next three years.
At that point retirement expenses will account for one out of every four dollars spent in the district. It's only a matter of time - and not as long as you think - before retirement expenses climb to 33% of the budget, then 50% and higher.
At that point, the fire district will be just as much of a retirement benefit program as it will be concerned with fighting fires, etc.
The district's solution is to put a band-aid over this problem with this $2,200 tax, which over 10 years will bring an extra $100 million into the district budget.
The problem is that even this huge band-aid is inadequate to stop the fiscal hemorrhaging. According to the budget that the chief presented to LAFCO, even with the Measure $ tax hike the district will be spending $418,000 more than it receives in 2016.
In 2017 the deficit is projected to be $223,000. In 2018 it's $329,000. In 2019 it's $405,000. In 2020 it's $536,000. In the final year of the tax hike, 2021/22, the deficit is projected to be $640,000.
That adds up to $2.5 million in deficit spending - even with an extra $100 million coming into the district. In 2022 the district will be left with a paltry $340,000 in its budget.
Something has to change. The district believes that something should be throwing more taxpayer money at the problem. But, as you see, that only kicks the can down the road - just like our state and federal governments have been doing for years.
I believe the solution is serious cost-cutting measures. That could include raising the retirement age, having employees contribute more to their pensions, reducing the size of those pensions or replacing pensions with 401(k)s like most people must make do with.
It also could include balancing the staffing so that there are more firefighters and fewer captains and engineers. Replacing one engineer with one firefighter doesn't just save $18,000 per year, it has the potential to save the district about $500,000 in retirement expenses if that person retires at 50 with a pension equal to nearly full salary every year for the next 30 years.
Another cost-savings option is to hire more paid on-call firefighters and volunteers. Other possibilities include expanding the Cal Fire contract and not sending gas-guzzling, polluting fire engines to medical calls, which comprise the vast majority of calls for service.
These are just a few ideas. I'm sure there's more. Where there's a will, there's a way.
But if this tax passes, it will just be business as usual in the district. Until, 10 years from now, the taxpayers will be assaulted with another campaign to raise their taxes with threats that they will face the decimation of their fire protection if they don't cough up the dough.
My guess is that the tax hike at that point could be double today's request, perhaps $5,000 per household over 10 years. But with the potential for dozens of district employees to retire early at nearly full pay, that tax hike probably won't be enough to stop the deficit spending. And the cycle will continue once again.
Let's get off this treadmill now before it's too late.
This year the district is projected to spend $1.22 million in overtime pay. Next year: $1.26 million. In 2013, $1.3 million. In 2014, $1.34 million. In 2015, $1.38 million.
That totals to $6.5 million that the district is planning to spend on overtime in the next few years.
Simply reducing or eliminating OT would go a long way toward plugging the deficit. It also could allow for the hiring of more firefighters, including paid on-call and volunteers.
I invite you to attend the ECCFPD Board meeting on May 7th at 6:30 in the City of Oakley council chambers. Here is link to the agenda. http://www.eccfpd.org/assets/documents/BoardPacketMay72012.pdf
As you will see in the agenda Chief Henderson will be presenting the Board of Directors with what may be the District model if you convince voters to vote no on measure S. I hope you will take some time and read the information and also study the current budget and proposed budget. Your cost saving ideas will not produce an amount suffient to erase the current deficit. Many different scenarios including changes to benefits, were plugged into the ten year model and none of them came close to fixing the deficit. If the measure fails as you propose, the board will continue the explore cost reduction options at the same time may be closing three stations and laying off 24 firefighters.
If the Board was to take your suggestions and implement them it would be 5-10 years before savings would be enough to eliminate the current shortfall. Measure S will give the Board time needed to implement a strategy that could change some of the current benefit structure. The decision to extent the current labor agreement with a reopener after the June 5th ballot measure was specifically intended to give the stake holders the opportunity to make adjustments that would start to control some benefit costs. The current fiscal problems of the district were not caused by runaway pay and benefits for firefighters and making them the villain is a cheap shot.
There are ways to provide our first responders with pay and benefits equal to the risks they take and the service they provide our community, I just hope the voters understand and give the Board a chance to work collaboratively with labor and find a long term solution.
Your invitation to a meeting would be a waste of time. You say the chief will talk on what may be the model if the measure fails. This sounds like a staged meeting brainwashing people with scare tactics of doom and gloom. If the measure proposed really paid for fire and not putting on paramedics for the union you may have a point to argue. If the measure or new tax did not pay the several million dollars that are short in the pension account and since this money is going to duplicate services we already get from another source it is unworthy of any sane persons vote. Waste is waste and this tax is putting my savings account to waste. I have to agree with Mr. Roberts.
I look at it this way: I would rather pay $10 PER YEAR for six paramedics that we control than pay nothing for 3 paramedics whose continued presence we have no control over.
You accuse me of a cheap shot for making firefighters the villains for their pay and benefits. Actually, I don't criticize them at all. If I were in their shoes I'd try to get as much money and benefits as I could.
I do accuse you and the other directors (as well as the board of supervisors who were in charge before you) for allowing employee expenses to run the district's finances into the ground.
It's obvious that the district's current fiscal problems are mostly due to employee expenses. After all, they account for 78 percent of the district's budget.
Of the $8.6 million being spent on employees, $2.5 million - or 29 percent - is going just for retirement expenses. As I point out in my letter, retirement expenses increased 26 percent this year. They are projected to rise another 30 percent in the next three years, consuming a quarter of the total budget in three years.
I don't begrudge disrict employees for wanting to be able to retire at age 50 and receive as much as 90 percent of their pay for the rest of their lives. Most of us would love to do so.
The question is whether it's fiscally prudent to allow that in a district that is facing bankruptcy. Raising the retirement age, having employees contribute more to their pensions and paring back the amount of those pensions are just a few of the options to save the district millions of dollars in the coming years.
Another more immediate savings option is to cut back or eliminate overtime, which is costing the district more than $1 million per year.
And reducing the number of fire captains and fire engineers would free up funds to hire more firefighters, including paid on-call and volunteers.
None of this is pleasant or easy. But these are tough economic times and tough choices need to be made.
I'm suggesting that the district cut some of the fat at the top so that money can be freed up to plug the deficit and hire more firefighters.
You also said firefighters don't deserve better benefits than electricians, because you found a document that says retired firefighters live longer than retired electricians. Do you really think the impact the two jobs has on someone is similar? Do you think an electrician wakes up at night in a sweat thinking about the ceiling fan he installed? I assure you, plenty of firefighters wake up that way, thinking about the dead child he recovered, or the sobbing woman he consoled after everything she had has burned? For most people, the sight of a child who has been mangled in a car crash is something they might see once in their lives, if that, and it will probably stay with them forever. Fireifhgters deal with that nearly every day --- injuries, death, massive, life-altering tragedies, and they come back and do it again tomorrow.
Get real.
You have turned a blind eye to the value provided by firefighters, the stress they are under and the basic tenets of training and experience, and made your pronouncements based solely on numbers that fit your opinion. You say the life-expectancy data shows firefighters should get less? We, I can produce some that say they should get more. How about this one; CareerCast's report on the most stressful jobs in America, widely reported by CNN, Time and other sources, ranks firefighters #2, right behind soldiers.
What I am suggesting is that there's an imbalance in a fire department that has three times as many fire captains and engineers as firefighters. Laying off or buying out some of the captains and engineers will free up significant funds to hire more firefighters while plugging the deficit.
On your second point that you think I said firefighters don't deserve better benefits than electricians: I never said that. I was simply responding to a comment that stated that firefighters have lower life expectancies than NFL linemen.
This is a common myth that public safety employees die young - many assert that they are dead seven years after they retire. So I pointed out the CalPERS study showing that they actually live longer than most.
Your third point that I have turned a blind eye to the value provided by firefighters is also wrong. I value them as much as anyone. Which is why I am proposing cost-cutting options so that the district can hire more of them without having to raise taxes.
And on your last point, the question is not whether firefighting is stressful. I'm sure it is. The question is what the district should do to remain solvent while hiring more firefighters.
I believe the district should cut costs by raising the retirement age from 50, raise pension contributions, reduce or eliminate overtime and reduce the large number of "chiefs" in the district in order to hire more "indians." There are other cost-cutting options, but this would be a good start.
The one thing we don't need to do, however, is raise taxes $2,200 over 10 years when many people and businesses are still suffering from the Great Recession.
I hope I don't come across like I'm am giving an elementary school lesson on firefighting but I just want to make it as clear as I can so everyone can understand ranks and roles. I'm positive that Mr. Roberts is very well educated but his arguments are flawed on this subject for no other reason than lack of understanding of how the fire service works. East Contra Costa is not top-heavy. They have done there best on a volunteer fire budget to provide full-time fire protection to the states leading region for growth for most of the past decade. I'm sure I would make the same mistakes if I were asked to argue the top-heaviness of the string group of an orchestra versus the other groups since I am not as qualified when it comes to music.
In a district with 47 fire suppression personnel, just 12 are classified as firefighters. These people -- who are the hardest workers, the muscle breaking down doors and the compassionate healers -- comprise just 25 percent of the total staffing.
They also are earning $14,000-$18,000 less on average than the 31 fire engineers and captains.
In addition, firefighters receive much less health care coverage, averaging about $6,000/year compared to the $15,000/year that most fire engineers/captains receive in health benefits. That's a $9,000 differential.
So, the district could save $23,000-$27,000 per year by replacing one fire engineer or captain with one firefighter. The replacement of three fire engineers/captains with three firefighters would free up enough money to hire an additional full-time firefighter or several additional on-call and volunteer firefighters.
That's what I'm talking about regarding rectifying the top-heavy staffing. The district would save money and be able to hire more firefighters, who are among the hardest working people on its payroll.
A firefighter who puts in 30 years and retires at age 50 might receive $65,000 every year for the rest of his life - possibly another 30 years. That totals to $1.95 million.
A fire engineer under the same circumstances might receive $2.46 million in retirement pay. That's a difference of $510,000.
So, replacing one fire engineer with one firefighter could save the district more than a half million dollars in retirement expenses. That's enough savings to hire six more firefighters.
These are the types of things the district could be exploring in order to save money. But instead they are demanding $2,200 from over-taxed taxpayers and threatening Armageddon if they don't get it.
The reality is using your logic and applying it to a war, we would all be speaking German or Spanish right now. It's not top heavy as you need structure to be successful--not everyone can be a chief and not everyone can be an Indian. You need a mix.
By your own comments, you are discredited as having no idea what you are smoking.
Years ago we were seldomly able to open the cases and take out our air bottles so we had to breath the nasty smoke that surely caused cancer. Not to long ago we were required to put on the same nasty wet black dirty gear with fresh blood, vomit and cancer inviteing funk. Thanks to you we now have a second set so we can decon our main set and still be ready for the next incident.
The unions fought long and hard to make my job safer so I can live a full life and not take this funk home to my family as well.
Thank you IAFF for the long hard battle and getting our butts of that most dangerous jobs list.
davepa
I heard that firefighters are not even on the ten most dangerous jobs. Something needs to be done with this problem so people like me do not half to worry where we are getting the extra money to pay an extra tax for a fifty one year old retiree.
From Back issues to shoulder-knee-elbow reconstructive surgery, to neck and spine problems, our firefighters have a lower life expectancy than an NFL offensive linemen. They deserve what they get and more.
Mr. Roberts has it wrong.
The California Public Employees Retirement System has issued a report comparing life expectancy for miscellaneous state employees compared to public safety employees. Not only do public safety employees not die earlier - they actually live slightly longer.
A miscellaneous male CalPERS member at age 50 can expect to live to 80.1. 50-year-old firefighters can expect to live to 81.7 and police officers to 82. For the public at large, a 50-year-old male can expect to live to 78.4, according to annuityadvantage.com.
My guess is that public safety employees live longer because they retire early with a nice pension and premium health benefits. The average taxpayer, on the other hand, must work much longer and retire with little, or probably zero, pension and rely on Medicare.
Here's a link to the CalPERS report: http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/pubs/employer/experience-study.pdf
BaronAswind, maybe it makes you feel better to attack people like that, but when they actually give proof and you just make personal attacks the only one you are making look bad is yourself. Your comment actually strengthens Dave's argument being that you prove you have no way to provide an actual rebuttal.
MillieP, you are correct, firefighters were not even listed on the list of the 15 most dangerous jobs for 2015. The list is;
1) Fishers and related fishing workers
2) Logging workers
3) Aircraft pilots and flight engineers
4) Farmers and ranchers
5) Coal mining
6) Roofers
7) Refuse and recyclable material collectors
8) Driver/Sales workers and truck drivers
9) Police and sheriff's patrol officers
10) Electrical power-line installers and repairers
11) Construction laborers
12) Taxi drivers and chauffeurs
13) Ground and maintenance workers
14) Athletes, coaches, umpires, and related workers
15) Operating engineers and construction equipment operators
There you have it. All those people out there who say firefighters are so deserving of these pensions because they have such a dangerous job I now ask you, where is the early retirement and generous pensions for our taxi drivers, loggers, construction crews, farmers, and pizza delivery boys? Yes, according to the BLS, a pizza delivery boy has a more dangerous job then a firefighter. He is putting his life on the line every day, remarkably more so then a firefighter.
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-dangerous-jobs-2011-9?op=1
Calling me a mediocre writer who works for mediocre newspapers, lives in a mediocre town, likely regrets my mediocre life and is jealoous and selfish sounds rather abusive to me. And it doesn't really address my argument.
My argument is that the greater good can be served by cutting costs in the fire district instead of hitting overburdened taxpayers with a $2,200 tax.
Raising the retirement age, rectifying the top-heavy staffing and reducing or eliminating overtime can save millions of dollars that can be used to plug the deficit and hire more firefighters.
It's a win-win. No lives are risked, taxpayers' wallets are not further plundered, the district remains solvent and more firefighters are hired.
Unfortunately, the district is not presenting us with that option. It's either cough up $2,200 or your life is at risk. I think there are other alternatives worth exploring.