Home foreclosures and short sales are not uncommon in Grand Terrace. Citizens are stretching lower incomes to cover their subsistence and housing. It is time that the City Council and All City Employees look themselves in the mirror and ask, How much can I give up and survive. Many citizens have lost as much as half of their income and are struggling to keep their homes. To see City Management Employees present plans to put the City in Deeper and Deeper Debt or spend money for non absolute essentials has reached the level of being obscene.
The RDA scheme of past years has been like giving a Shopzilla a credit card. In 30 years the RDA has not yet provided a project that actually improved sales tax revenue or provided significant improvement in employment opportunities. Who has benefited from the debt. Primarily the benefactors have been those employed at the high end of the salary scale within City Hall.
So the Management Class of City Hall should suck it up and take a 50 percent pay cut and benefits cut and work a full work week and step into the same reality that the majority of our citizens are living. Perhaps then their projects and budgets would be more realistic and practicable and successful.
We make the hard choices every day. Wash Dishes or replace dishwasher. The work needs to be done. If this City Staff isn't ready to work for less it is time they find a different place to work. We can't now afford them and we can't continue to add to the retirement debt / obligation they are building up as future obligation for funds. Truth is that we could not afford them for the past 30 years and that is why the city has been addicted to the RDA Debt Scheme.
Let's hope this City Council will stop digging a bigger and bigger debt future justified by rosier projections of future profits and windfalls. The city should budget for the minimal amount of expect revenue and not pretend that there is more. IF there is more, then decide what project to push further, not whose salary gets increased or restored to levels above 20 percent more than the City's Average.
