Photo by Boyd Loving
Ridgewood Council to meet with department leaders
Friday February 22, 2013, 1:45 PM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
The heads of Ridgewood’s |various departments will begin meeting with the Village Council next week to discuss their specific portions of the 2013 municipal budget.
Special public meetings have been planned for Monday, Feb. 25 and Tuesday, Feb. 26, when representatives from each department will present their wish lists and proposed expenditures for the year. Those lists were submitted to the Ridgewood manager and chief financial officer late last year, but have not been reviewed extensively by the village’s governing body.
Council members, after they review the separate presentations, will have the opportunity to suggest changes and spending cuts to reach their desired budget amounts and any tax increases or decreases.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/192536281_Ridgewood_Council_to_meet_with_department_leaders.html
Take a good look at those “wish lists” submitted by Dept Heads.
They need to be reviewed for a method of securing funds from Recreation and Graydon Pool users would be helpful.
We have enough of those “Preserve” Status Quo people.
take a good look at the fire and police dept over time budget. big money. some cop’s last year made up to 225grand. do you see the toys they have. talk about over paid.
The top salaried cop was about 17500 + or – a couple grand the rest came from contractor work not from the village. Don’t be jealous it will eat you alive from the inside out.
When the median compensation for a cop in NJ is less than $90K and the median Ridgewood cop earns significantly more than cops in neighboring towns (in their Ridgewood salary), we need to ask ourselves whether Ridgewood cops should be earning $175K a year, if their position as a cop also entitles them to another $50-75K+ a year in “contractor pay”. That extra pay is only available to them BECA– USE they are cops and it has become an “expected” source of income that equals or exceeds the total annual income for more than 75% of all workers in the US. That can hardly be considered “suplemental” income. So, it is realistic tshiny his additional income be into account when determining their appropriate level of compensation through the Village contracts.
We also need to keep in mind that the Village compensation is what determines an employee’s pension. If compensation is too high, pension benefits will also be excessive. Pension and health benefits have grown out of control in recent years and municipal obligations are going to explode in coming years as the percentage of retirement age workers increases around the country. Pension and retirement benefits were never intended to exceed the average US worker’s compensation and health benefits during “working years”. Yet, pensions and retirement health benefits for many Ridgewood retires exceed that amount by 50-100%. That is a clear indication that something is wrong with our contracts, in such cases.
There was a time when public workers accepted lower pay, in exchange for job security and a modest lifetime pension that is not available to most private sector workers, who must earn enough during their working years to sustain them through retirement. This is no longer the case. The system has been distorted, by excessive escalation in contractual increases, to a point where the average public worker now earns more that their private sector counterpart according to the latest government statistics AND enjoys job security protections with millions of dollars in pension and health benefits during retirement. The system is broken and needs to be fixed, because taxpayers cannot afford for it to continue in its current state.
Who says the public sector is the rule? If you are in the public sector and don’t like your wages change jobs. The pension has been adjusted to compensate for higher salaries, the rwd police union adjusted their contract to limit sick time, payouts and vacation accruals and capped longevity payments for new hires and dropped the starting salary so the town could hire new officers. The system is not broken it is functioning fine you just dont like what a cop makes period, and if the cop is willing to work extra and make more for his family good for him.In case you haven’t thought about it having cops on the street for traffic details put more cops on the street this is a benifit to the taxpayer. Arbitration rulings have changed to meet the times every thing is adjusting. There is nothing to indicat a tax collection problem in rwd it is around 98% according to the budget. Your just another poster with a keyboard, and an attitude toward cops, and public workers in general.