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Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006 | Proposition C to privatize the work done by city employees appears to be seen as a panacea by many people outside of government who believe there are gargantuan savings by having private contractors do municipal work.
The only savings that can be realized by any switch to the private sector, is to eliminate the high paying salaries of mid and upper level city employees – this is where the fat is, and Sanders could have already moved to eliminate this fat, but he has not done so. It does not take a proposition to be a good manager and cut fat.
If it takes two gardeners, or two trash guys to do a certain amount of work, it will take a private contractor an equivalent number of people to do the same amount of work. There will be no substantial savings at the worker level. The entire privatization effort can bear the most fruit by eliminating the high salaried people – the bureaucrats, of whom Sanders has hired too many already. This is why Proposition C is a big joke being played on the citizens of this city.
If Sanders eliminated the top people who he said he was going to let go when he campaigned for office, then a significant savings could be achieved.
When Sanders hires a $140,000 a year manager, think what that does to the retirement debt actuarially. Sanders has actually been adding to the retirement deficit by hiring high salaried people at a time when many employees need to be removed from the payrolls, and concomitantly, from the retirement deficit that continues to grow each month.
If Proposition C passes, Sanders will hire an extra 5 or 6 (or more) high paying bureaucrats to monitor the program.