Barry Allen’s Comments on Glendale Finances in the 07-20-08 Vanguard Weekly News

The City of Glendale has finally reached a point where fiscal accountability should come first. After the years that the City Council at the behest of City Management bestowed salacious salaries, bountiful benefits and plentiful pensions that are far and above anything anyone in the private sector could hope for, it is coming to bite the public -- you and me—in the pocketbook.

Rather than being responsible conservators of our financial resources the five people on the dais and those before them have granted so much to so few that our libraries are being closed; open space that they have bought is unused; the benefits of living in a community are being lost to salaries. The number of employees has grown disproportionately more than the population. The Council has benefited ‘developers’ that bought unusable acreage and a few years later which was sold to the City for millions of dollars and we can‘t even use it!

Glendale Water and Power has recently gone through several managers. Their infrastructure has been decaying and the bailouts have been through bond issues. Where has the money gone? A simple answer. It was transferred to the General Fund to pay salaries, benefits and pensions. Since 2002 GWP transferred $134,000,000 to the General Fund and even that was insufficient to keep the City from spending more than it took in.

A study by the California Municipal Rates Group in May 2008 showed Glendale electric rates were the highest of the 24 utilities surveyed including investor owned power companies! In 2008 the State average system revenue per KWh was $0.128 Glendale was the highest at $0.154 and the lowest was Santa Clara at $0.087. This study is available through Vanguardians. Between 1999 and May 2008, Glendale has raised the rates 37.5% and has a 6% rate increase on the books for this year. Compare that to Anaheim CA which has increased rates only 17% since 1999 and the rate today $0.11 KWh. By the way, the head of their water and power is a woman.

It is time to go to the City Council and demand fiscal accountability. There is so much talk about the things we are doing for our children. However, we are burdening them with the largesse being bestowed by Council. In order to keep the Council focused on their fiscal responsibility we need to make that the issue of the coming election. One Council member shared with me that when he came on the Council, he was fed the Management line about the importance of salaries. Since then he has seen the lack of accountability.

A case in point. The Glendale Fire Department acknowledges that of the 14,000 calls for service over 12,000 are for medical emergencies yet they continue to staff for fires with 48 people assigned to 12 ‘rigs‘. There are 5 rescue ambulances (RA) with 10 people assigned. The GFD will tell you that an engine company with 4 people goes along to help the RA but that engine can‘t transport the patient. The RA crews work the same 24 hour shift and they handle 12,000 calls. Why not change the staffing to 12 hour shifts? Why not put more resources in for the medical emergencies and less to non-existent fire suppression? Why are the GFD injuries so high? Why won‘t they share the nature, type or location of the injury? In the next few Council meetings we will hear how the GFD served in the statewide brush fires but what won‘t be shared is the cost of position coverage overtime. As to salaries, Vanguardians is in the process of compiling the statistics from numerous agencies. So far, Glendale pays more than anyone else. BA