Fred Wilson goes to the beach

I really, really hope there is a nationwide seach for a new city manager. We are at a turning point in SB and if it doesn't start an upturn soon, many of us taxpayers are moving out. Someone has to stop the political games and good old boys club in this town. I have numerous friends that work in city hall and have heard many stories of the politics and practice of managers covering each others ass. There is so much incompetence they don't even point fingers at each other anymore, just lie for each other. Or blame it on an underling that eventually gets so scapegoated that they quit or are fired for things they were blamed for that their managers were responsible for. The fiscal irresponsibility is rampant. The waste and poor judgement is appauling. What did Mr Wilson do in his 12 years? Or how about the manager of the downtown mall? He's been there 30 years and look at it? How do people keep their jobs in this town? The answer is that everyone in city hall just looks the other way and collects a good sized paycheck. THere is NO accountability for anyone for anything.

You know, some times the flashy stuff is the news, the conflict, the fun quotes.

This one, think. Parks and Rec was underfunded and had bad employees for years. Ditto the Animal Control facility. It took scandals in both to get action. The guy in charge finds another job. How is it that went on for years and years, and the guy in charge actually got a $40,000 raise for his excellence? What's wrong in the other City departments?

Interview a Code Compliance officer. Ask how many cases he is backlogged. Ask how long this has been the case. His boss took on a whole other job and had him in front of bounce houses and passing out hot dogs.

The Administrator watched this and cashed his paychecks. This wasn't a neophyte guy, but someone who had years and years with the City. He was unaware the Parks and Rec people were who they were? He watched while Operation Phoenix was implemented with them. He presided over an Animal Control shelter where there were filthy conditions, deteriorating facilities and unhappy employees. For this, he accepted a $40,000 raise?

By the way, the Mayor says the PD took the lion's share of his Phoenix funds in overtime. He's right. They did. Bigtime. It is a part of the story that is not so well known. How is it an officer works 40 hours a week and works about that much overtime? What does it say about officer safety? One would think that staying awake is as about as important as Chief Billdt's degree. If you open the door a little, you open it a lot. I'd says it's about time to have a searchable database of officers, their pay, and their overtime. It might also be of interest to have a searchable database of what per shift each did as public record. Like, during their regular shift, what and how many cases did they dispose? How many during overtime hours? Did some guys sleep during their day hours and go through the motions after hours? Now, it gets interesting, no? If it's okay for August Vollmer, surely it must be okay for the POA members to demonstrate how hard their membership was working. It's public record after all.

Perhaps the guys who are complaining about their personnel actions could agree to release all their records? Let the public decide, along with the PD, if their actions over the years were justified? If it's so unfair as alleged, why not? If Chief Billdt is the evil problem, let's all have a look at the whole careers, and make a determination. It certainly must be so that the actions these officers took were exemplary, and the Chief blatantly wrong. It would be courageous for them to do so. Well, maybe not so courageous, since they are so obviously right and the Chief wrong.

I like how a 27-year sergeant cries elephant tears about retaliation. Note: 27-year career. Worries about retaliation after 27 years. He's an object lesson about the horrible PD system? He'll likely be worrying for maybe another three years. Okay. Let's see if he goes out on some kind of medical retirement himself. He bills his speech as "personal opinion," yet at the union Web site, there it is in its entirety. Is it is personal opinion, or union position? Where is the documented proof of someone suffering as a result of favoritism or whatnot? A 27-year career?

Perhaps the next Chief should be chosen as a popularity contest in the POA. Don't like the discipline? Solution: Fire the Chief.

You will kill your Charter 186. You will have done it yourselves. You are on your way. What goes around, etc.

The Devil Is In The Details:

YOU must be itching to kick impoverished citizens out of their homes and into the streets. Hmm- Gentrification? WHAT gentrification?
The studies show that our cops aren't paid ENOUGH for what they supposedly have to deal with. The chief of police is not qualified for the job and it's showing in the cops.
Leave our good, qualified cops alone. You're a complete moron with an agenda of your own. The difference between the sensational comments our cops make on this blog and yours is that they're telling the truth and you're intentionally spinning a web of lies.
Quit trying to plant seeds. You're a crappy farmer.
There is no way we're going to agree that the 27-year vet of our police force isn't concerned about retaliation if they say that they are.
Finally, with regards to your nasty little comment, "What goes around, etc.": it HAS come around. It came right around and smacked you right in the face. Just because we bloggers support our cops and agree that their concerns are valid doesn't mean everybody believes ANYTHING that ANYBODY writes on this blog.
Change is coming to San Bernardino. You are not going to stop it by lying on a little newspaper blog. The newspaper REPORTS the news. It doesn't CREATE it. This blog simply reports what's going on AWAY from people's computers. The news is happening in City Hall, the Police Department and on the streets of San Bernardino. I see no concern for making our city better in your comment. I simply saw an effort to take advantage of San Bernardino, yet again.

As long as we are talking about police, what about Fire? They make huge amounts of money in overtime. The city even pays them overtime to do carpentry work! How's that for being overpaid? You could hire a union carpenter for less, but no, lets just pay the firemen more overtime. That's what I meant about fiscal irresponsibility. It goes on all thru the city. And Fred Wilson just agrees to look the other way because Fire is too policly powerful. That's why we need someone from outside the city politics to straighten it all out. But do you think that will happen? Probably not. The Police and Fire are just too powerful and too spoiled. They spend the bulk of the citys budget and have no qualms about spending more and more. Fire wouldn't even come to the table and negotiate with the Citys fical problems. So much for co-operation, at least the Police made some concessions. I am so pessamistic about this town, I just want to move away, as do most of my neighbors. Pretty soon the town will be nothing but illigal immigrents, gangbangers and welfare recipients.

Perhaps you missed my earlier post about firefighter pay in the city.

Here it is:

I have now factored these new numbers in, and come up with a new gross pay average for 2006-7:

The average gross pay (salary+overtime) for a San Bernardino Firefighter in fiscal year 2006-7 was: $121,245

This is about $24,000 higher than the police average.

Of the 155 personnel who earned above the minimum salary, 128 earned more than $100,000.

More than 4 of every 5 firefighters took in more than $100,000.

A fire captain earned the highest amount, higher than the chief, with $179,157.

What was really startling was the overtime. Without it, the average salary would have been under $100,000.

95 out of 155 firefighters raked in more than $30,000 in overtime.

2 guys took in more than $60,000 in overtime.

13 guys took in more than $50,000 in overtime.

41 firefighters took in more than $40,000 in overtime.

For those who are uninitiated, the way overtime works is basically this: Firefighters work two full days per week, or 48 hour shifts. In a month, they can work 10 days, or 240 hours, at regular pay. Any shift beyond those 10 days is overtime. Every firefighter has opportunities to sign up for overtime, and virtually all do.

Some do a lot more than others.

The long-awaited story on police and fire compensation is coming this weekend. But the angle is a little different than originally expected.

Now, it's within the context of city budget crisis. The police union overwhelmingly voted down a measure last night to accept some concessions.

We'll ask them, and the fire unions, whether the city should expect to cut any costs at the expense of their salaries, benefits or other perks.

Robert,

Please clarify for the readers above that the Police Union has not given any concessions with regard to pay or benefits. The only groups that are currently taking a 5% paycut are Management/Confidential and Fire Management. Both PD Management and Fire Management offered cuts to their departments that did not impact their employees pay or benefits (just like all city departments). But both Police and Fire Unions have absolutely refused to negotiate with regard to impacts that will personally effect their wallets. They'd rather see people with families laid off rather than negotiate a reduction in benefits or pay as the groups mentiond above already have. You can check the record, it's the truth!

To "Another Anonymous":

Your statement that the police union "refused to negotiate with regard to impacts that will personally effect their wallets" is patently false.

Before the latest council move to get rid of the department's helicopter, the police department was slated to have over $4 million dollars cut from its budget. It now stands to lose $3.5 million in budget cuts.

Oh by the way...folks like me were talking about the Measure Z switcharoo a la the California lottery, but I digress.

The fact of the matter is that Sgt. Rich Lawhead, president of the SBPOA met repeatedly with City Manager Fred Wilson and other high ranking officials for months about the budget.

However, the negotiations were one sided with the City Manager wanting the POA to negotiate against itself. Wilson and the City never negotiated in good faith, were never transparent or ever offered up anything that could even remotely be identified as a substantive compromise.

Lawhead at one point suggested over $1 million dollars in cuts that would have come directly out of the pockets of police officers in return for a binding arbitration concession that would allow grievances to be filed with an independent body under a loser pays format.

Given the rampant corruption and gestapo-like tactics currently employed by Chief Billdt, you can understand these concerns. However, Wilson repeatedly refused to consider this or offer up anything constructive.

It should be further noted that the POA offered up a couple of ideas on revenue generation and wasteful spending that would have saved and/or generated a couple of million dollars. These ideas were either never implemented or never given as credit towards the total cuts the city was looking to make.

For example, the City maintenance facility was internally charging the SBPD over $60 an hour to maintain vehicles in the fleet. After doing some research, Lawhead found that savings could be realized if the services were contracted out to the local Ford dealer.

Magically, the hourly rate for maintenance on police vehicles was cut from over $60 an hour to $19 an hour.

Again, Wilson and city negotiators did not give any credit to the POA membership for this.

After looking at the above facts, what incentive did the POA have to agree to any cuts? Instead of doing an honest assessment and truly seeking out wasteful spending, Wilson was looking for a quick fix to the problem he created.

Finally, as all of this was taking place, Mayor Morris decided to throw the police union under the bus and blame it and everyone else for the problems with Parks & Recreation and the problems with Operation Phoenix.

At the end of the day, why would you make any concessions, especially when not legally obligated, after you have been been spit in the face or treated so unprofessionally?

Dear anonymous,

Joseph Turner's elaborate explanation aside, the truth is the Police and Fire unions took zero concessions during the budget crisis.

Not saying it's good or bad, but it is the bottom line.

Robert Rogers

You've got to pay the PD a decent salary and can't expect them to take a pay cut. We are talking about the murder capital of the world and inept leadership. How many of us go to work not knowing if we are going to get killed in the line of duty? I don't see too many king crab fishermen holding up their hands.

Why the officers of SB don't go over to Ontario and work is beyond me, try almost half again their pay for half the work. I wouldn't blame them one bit. If that did happen, we can always call in the Nantional Guard.

I don't have a beef so much with police as with Fire. While I appreciate their life saving potential, the truth is we don't have high rise fires in SB and compaired to police, the risk to life and limb is minimal. It's a pretty cushy job. They grocery shop, go to the gym, play racket ball and watch TV on their shifts. THAT is the REALITY. Now my friends in the city tell me the fireman have a little conspiricy going to call in sick so that their coworkers can get in more overtime. Why don't we have on call firefighters? When an opening for a fireman comes up, hundreds apply for the job. Why don't we hire a few on call to fill in the sick call ins so we don't pay overtime?????? NO, that would make too much sense, and after all, this is SB. Just a little common sense is all City Hall needs to cut the budgets a bit. But the unions are too powerful. We don't have to cut the firefighters pay to cut the budget, just don't PAY overtime to cover shifts for people calling in sick.

Keep in mind when a firefighter works that 2 day shift of 48 hours, during that time he sleeps, eats, goes grocery shopping, works out at the gym, plays racketball, and watches a big screen TV in a lazy boy chair (each firefighter has one). Watch how hard they work at the next accident you see them at or dumpster fire. Granted they have expertise and can step up in an emergency (and do occasionally) , but lets face it, it's a gravy job that pays a huge salary. Why else would hundreds apply for the few openings? That tells you right there the job is overpaid.

While the two Anonymous posters think that it's an easy job for firefighter's - and I'm not going to argue their daily schedule - the firefighters in our fair city (San Bernardino) are having to put up with the same thing our police department is - lack of compentent leadership. The incidents related to me should put their pay in line with combat pay. Just wait...at some point the fire department will be doing to Conrad, Fratus, and Dupree what the police department is doing Billdt and his cronies.

Lack of leadership is ruining this city and it starts at the top with Morris.....at least Wilson has left but Morris will ensure that another putz will fill the position leaving San Bernardino in the lurch again(still).

Note: last decent family in San Bernardino, turn the lights out when you leave......

We need new management blood in our city, starting with the new city manager. There needs to be a nationwide search to find one with experience and a history of success. Not another good old boy from somewhere within the city or even the county. There aren't many decent families left in this town, mostly welfare recipients that don't want to work and do want to have more babies and illegal immigrants that can't and won't speak english. There is nothing racist about those comments, that's just how it is. When I was out of work, I had a devil of a time finding a job because I didn't speak Spanish! Doesn't anyone else see what's wrong with this picture?? Downtown needs to be cleaned up starting with the mall being bulldozed and all the roach infested homes in the downtown area being torn down also. Whether it's with Lakes and Streams or just enforcing Immigration law, this town needs to be cleaned up. Isn't anyone going to do it? I'm leaving this dump as soon as I retire as are a lot of other soon to be retirees. Let the illegal immigrents turn it into Mexico. That is what is going to happen if someone in this town doesn't stop it. There will only be overpaid firemen and corrept police left to run the place.

What's wrong in Huntington Beach that they didn't look at the condition of SB before hiring Wilson? Another place NOT to move to. The guy must be able to hypnotize people.

Huntington Beach is as bad as San Bernardino regarding dirty politics and corrupt politicians.....that's why Fred should feel at home.

I hope he takes a lot of his friends in management with him to HB. Or I hope we get someone from outside that won't look the other way when the other managers bungle along in their jobs. Either way, we need out with the old and in with the new in the way of city hall management.

Amen to that!