Hermosa Beach is more famous than some people realize. For starters, Tonight Show Host Jay Leno plies his comedic craft at the Hermosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club every Sunday. He tries out all his jokes with a live audience (who pay a two drink minimum while listening, laughing, or groaning.) Horror novelist Stephen King's movie adaptation "1408" featured the Hermosa Beach post office in one scene. The city is also a booming battleground between public sector union leaders and city councilmembers, who are beholden to burdened taxpayers and generous pension obligations.
Recently reinstalled mayor Patrick "Kit" Bobko took the pension fight public, and shared his story with LA Weekly. The public sector unions were not pleased, to say the least. Union leaders have issued a long string of rebuttals, many of which do not withstand serious scrutiny in the face of the more serious situation -- a city with entitlement obligations beyond its budget to balance, short or long term. City public works leaders contend that Hermosa Beach will lose staff to neighboring cities should the city council amend benefits or reduce salaries for new workers. City leaders even mailed out flyers campaigning against massive, much-needed reforms
Some interesting stats about Hermosa Beach should give city residents pause about union leaders' concerns versus the looming consequences posed by lavish salaries, pensions, and benefits offered to these same public sector leaders:
From the city website, the following statistics are available:
The City of Hermosa Beach is a 1.3 square mile, general law City with a population of 19,435. The City is located 22 miles from the Los Angeles Civic Center and 5 miles south of the Los Angeles International Airport, at the heart of the “South Bay” region.
The community populationis not even one fifth the size of near-by Torrance.
The City has a budget of $35,000,000 and approximately 140 full time employees. Hermosa Beach is a full service City, with its own Police Department and Fire Department.
Hermosa Beach: small city, great parties, lots of money living in and around the area. All well and good. 140 employees, though? Really? As mentioned above, Mayor Bobko went public about the pension reforms-public worker disagreements to LA Weekly, which reported the following:
[Bobko] is troubled that union members of the Hermosa Beach Police Officers Association draw six-figure salaries in a laid-back, upper-middle-class, heavily white suburb that saw only a single murder in the past several years. He's disturbed that fire captains in the Hermosa Beach Firefighters Association, who deal with only a handful of structure fires citywide annually, rake in $240,000 a year.
With very few fires, and not much gun-fire, voters in the city should get "fired-up" about the flagrant obligations burning away the city's once and future funding. Big money goes to city leaders, who do not oversee much. In a subtle attempt to stifle Bobko's protests, empty investigations into Bobko's legal address, along with an intimidating union presence at city council meetings (aside from the occasional catwalk) have turned this budget battle into a personal drama as well as a battleground microcosm of the bigger battles ahead in California and many states in the country. While the Beatles were singing "Lovely Rita, Meter Maid!", the taxpayers, and the civic activists throughout the Beach Cities, may start singing another tune if Hermosa Beach city leaders do not take down these entitlement obligations.
The more egregious element of public worker pension problems centers on Hermosa's "elite" meter maid service. An employee checking the parking meters can earn up to $95,000 a year, while hard-pressed teachers of the Hermosa Beach City School District, who are taking on more students with fewer resources, take home $43,000 for their first year. After seventeen years, plus a Masters Degree and thirty semester units, an HBCSD teacher can earn $82,000: still less than a meter maid. Not so lovely.
Perhaps Hermosa Beach should contract all its city service to Los Angeles County, and let that government fund future pension obligations. Bobko and colleagues had suggested that Hermosa Beach contract out the meter maids, but tears and drama about the trauma over the fate of the "family of employees", hushed that up that option. Desperate times may call for desperate measures. City leaders could recruit volunteer police and fire from retirement homes, since they could serve the city for a stipend without the excessive entitlement costs.
If Hermosa Beach turns into a chartered city and breaks away from the state pension system, the city would have more freedom to negotiate pension liabilities. If city leaders explain effectively to residents the long-term consequences should the city refuse to act, then the leadership can float an voter initiative, just as San Jose and San Diego voters did, and enact pension reform through the ballot box. No matter what route HermosaBeach takes, nothing could be more "un"-lovey than meter maids getting big payouts, while teachers do without, and taxpayers in the city scramble for a way out of the long-term debt burden.
Everyone loves "Lovely Meter Maids", but they should not come with so unlovely a cost to Hermosa Beach taxpayers. This battle cannot rest on piece-meal reforms, but comprehensive structural changes which maintain law and order without bankrupting an entire city.
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