This is a great idea. Cities like Mountain View should start an initiative for pension reform. The MV Voice newspaper recently reported that a librarian in the city retired with a yearly pension of $187,000, that's right. Could not believe it.
Something needs to be done.

Wish they were doing this initiative at the state level where it belongs. As much as I agree with the notion of changing the benefit structure, I do fear that unilateral changes will hurt Menlo Park's ability to hire in the future if other cities don't follow along.
This is a statewide issue.

hire in the future? are you kidding? we need to eliminate entire departments and 'right size' the staff. we are a very small overstaffed place and this council has been spending money like drunken sailors. besides, who really believes that we can't hire people from the private sector with 12% unemployment and pay/vacation/pension packages like what the city employees get? these city folks are so far ahead of the game, even if you deeply cut back on these packages, droves of applicants would line up to apply for the jobs.

Due to repeated violations of our Terms of Use, comments from this poster are automatically removed. Why?