Community Commentary:

After reading your June 26 editorial, “Pay raises will come at a cost,” I look at the results of this fiscal year budgeting as the “the blame game.” Your editorial partly blames the Police Department for the problems of the budget. The union bosses wanted to stay firm at a 6% pay increase and the City Council pleaded with the union to give up 2%. I ask the question, why?

In our last election the police and fire unions both supported City Council members Ara Najarian, Frank Quintero and Laura Friedman. Bob Yousefian did not look for their endorsements, and he paid the price by losing his re-election.

Most voters do not know the issues or problems of the city. They say they are too busy with their own lives or actually do not care what goes on at City Hall, so they look for endorsements on election day. Many voters vote based on ethnic background, religion, gender or look to newspaper endorsements. Sadly, few voters take the time to really know the character or record of the candidates and essentially vote blindly before they go into the voting booth.

Over the past few months, council members have been grappling with the budget. They are not independent, instead beholden to the union bosses who helped put them into office. Nobody speaks for the public, and the public is too busy with their own lives and agendas to get involved.

Last week, council members were telling the public their backs were against the wall. They were doing the best they could with balancing the budget and said the public should contact Sacramento immediately for revenues owed our city. These men and women were saying “it’s not our fault” that our city must cut services and employees in order to balance the new budget.

How can one expect council members who are beholden to the unions to really care about how the city finances will be run? Last year, a few months after council candidates Najarian and Quintero both received $15,000 each from the four city unions, these two incumbent candidates plus Drayman and Weaver all voted to approve millions in city employee pay raises.

Why didn’t City Manager Jim Starbird and his highly paid senior financial staff tell council members that the California economy was riding a phony housing bubble, and city salaries and benefits could not be sustained forever?

Starbird and company behaved like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar when the housing market collapsed. They never took responsibility for poor economic forecasting, but instead blamed Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

If we had real leadership, our council members should have gone directly to the union bosses weeks ago and said the following: Anyone with a salary of more than $200,000 will take a 15% cut in salary, $100,000 a 10% cut in salary and less than $100,000 a 5% cut in salary. These salaries shall stay in place for the duration of the recession, plus one year beyond.

 MIKE MOHILL is a Glendale resident.