I'm all for it. I'd be willing to contribute to those $200,000

Great idea. Keeping public safety people close by should be a high priority.

But where is the Almanac's concern about property taxes?

How many acres of tax exempt property does the Town own?

What would be its current market value of these Town holdings?

At those values how much property taxes would these properties produce?

I'm all for it, too...however this should be negotiated with the police department Union.

This is compensation, no different from salary, medical, retirement, etc. All of those things are negotiated and are factored into the benefits package.

This should be no different.

Train Fan, I agree with you. This would be a benefit and should be negotiated as such. I just fear the union and town council will wind up taking the crazy position the officer is making a concession by living close to the town, and should get extra compensation for it!!

" the officer is making a concession by living close to the town"

The officer would be making a concession. Everything here is more expensive than farther away. Food, gas, etc all cost more, a lot more in some cases than it does in other areas. He or she would be getting a break on rent and paying more for virtually everything else.

# " the officer is making a concession by living close to the town"
#
# The officer would be making a concession. Everything here is more expensive than farther away.

1: Everyone here makes that concession. EVERYONE.

2: Around here, the average firefighter's income, average public school teacher's income and average police officer's income is HIGHER than the average tech worker's income.

Using the logic in this thread (the logic being that overnight quarters are needed due to the housing crunch and housing cost), tech worker's should get overnight quarters near work as well.

Train Fan:

if they want overnight quarters they need to talk to their employers. Yes, everyone here pays more to live here. The point is that many officers move quite a ways away so they don't have to pay more. That's the point. There needs to be some incentive if you want them to live closer. I also question your proposition that tech workers are making less than the average police officer. I know a number of tech workers and they are making darn good money. Some even more than me and I've been at my work for 25 years.

Perhaps the Almanac and its sister publications could provide a compilation of all the Bay Area public agencies that own property which they require/allow employees to live in and the terms of each arrangement.

And while they are at this data collection add he questions of hor much property does each entity own and what would be its current assessed value

"if they want overnight quarters they need to talk to their employers."

Fair enough, however this implies that a comparison of public sector and private sector is apples-to-apples, and it's not. In the private sector, the people that would pay for overnight quarters are the business owners (proprietors, shareholders, etc), and if they make mistakes in budgeting they pay the price. In the public sector, the people that pay are taxpayers, and if governments and/or Calpers makes a mistake, TAXPAYERS currently pay the price.

And for too long, the people that represent the people have done a poor job of representing the short-term and long-term interests of taxpayers, by allowing numerous give-aways that have long-term consequences that in many cases are foreseeable. All we have to do is look at the underfunded public-sector pension liabilities crisis across the country to see the results of this negligence.

It needs to stop, and it stops by not giving away perks, it stops by paying now for services now instead of the ponzi scheme government agencies and calpers currently employ. Government agencies have at least as much responsibility to represent the best interests of taxpayers as they do the best interests of government employees, and they've failed miserably on the former. That is indisputable.


"I also question your proposition that tech workers are making less than the average police officer."

I'll address this in a followup post (no time right now).