Huntington Beach’s Worker Payroll Is Tough to Swallow

* Regarding Huntington Beach city employees’ pay (“26 City Workers Earn $126,000 or More Each in ‘94,” Aug. 24): When I worked as an executive for a large corporation, I didn’t get overtime. If these people are executives, then they shouldn’t be paid overtime. If they are clerks that should be paid overtime, then their salaries are too high. Either way this is ridiculous.

DAVID CHEREB

Costa Mesa

* I wish you hadn’t come out with those articles on the high salaries of the Huntington Beach city staff.

First, somebody will come out with some sound privatization proposals.

Second, somebody else will start a petition for a new Jarvis property tax of half of 1% of property values.

Third, individuals in other cities are also going to question their budgets and perhaps pressure some austerity reforms.

For shame. Now what will I do with all the money I will save, if any of these items are passed?

DON WILLIAMS

Newport Beach

* The Aug. 24 article concerning Huntington Beach city personnel making (I did not say earning) $126,000 or more really angered me. It is interesting to me that nearly all the positions listed in the chart are management positions of one sort or another. Where, in the private sector, do management employees get paid overtime? And where are the checks and balances at City Hall, or the other Orange County cities? In business, there is intense pressure to get the job done without profit-robbing overtime hours posted to time cards, and there are review procedures and “report cards” to encourage conservative use of assets. It is human nature to pay oneself more, if one can do so safely, without fear of losing one’s job. And once a person has made $146,000 (in the case of a fireman) it’s pretty hard to go back to $88,000. People grow into their incomes.

This news confirms my worst suspicions of city management in general. Along with the Orange County fiscal crisis, it also helps to support a recent news item suggesting that there is far more waste and fraud at local levels than at national levels.

DONALD ROWAN

Placentia