State of California is broke

I'd think most places can go up 20¢ a gallon and nobody'd notice much if nobody said a word.

 

So is Detroit-.... soon.

 

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/3557710/

 

This is borderline politics, but it stays close enough to California issues that it's probably better to post it here.
Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom went on Adam Carolla's podcast the other day and basically sat there and listened to Carolla yell at him for an hour about some of the day-to-day nonsense that happens in the state. If you've ever wanted to hear a politician sound incredibly uncomfortable and awkward when confronted by what amounts to an average citizen, here's your chance.
Newsom comes on around, I believe the 45-minute mark:


http://adamcarolla.com/lt-gov-gavin-newsom-and-dennis-miller/

 

Per Newsom:
* California the worst state to start a business, 9 years straight (CEO Magazine)
* SF public sector unions successfully fought to keep performance reviews and disciplinary files OUT of consideration for job promotions.

 

These stories could become a poin files in their own right -- SF firefighter made $221,000 in overtime last year, pushing his total pay to $363,000, or $50,000 more than the fire chief. With two months to go this fiscal year, that same firefighter is at $265,000 in OT already.

http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2013/04/24/sf-firefighters-smoking-hot-ot-221000-and-counting/

 

While it's bullshit to pay someone that much in OT, it is technically cheaper than filling the required position to lessen the OT need. Plus you only have to pay benefits/pension to one worker versus two or three.

 

That dude is a hero. Never forget.

 

Again, the only way to fix the problem is to hire more people. Which will cost more, both short term and long term. Are you fine with that?

 

I am not sure about what's going on exactly in San Francisco, but some cities staff one more firefighter per rig than is required (and is practiced in other cities around the nation). Also there was a report awhile back that San Francisco has more trucks per capita than anywhere else. So the staffing levels and the need for overtime are not a given.

Well over half of the calls firefighters take don't involve fires but instead are 911 emergency calls. Beefing up ambulance patrols without sending a fire truck would reduce costs in a huge way.

 

LTL, that number is very well over 50%. What the fuck do we need full trucks for to take someone with a stomach ache to the hospital? The whole system is INCREDIBLY inefficient.

 

The comments are always interesting.
Here's the thing that utterly pi55es me off about this issue: it's ALL driven by the SFFD's policy that requires huge over-reactions to every call.

I live on a street on the border of the Tenderloin and Nob Hill that is a main thoroughfare for emergency vehicles. I would say that at least 4 or 5 times every day, a parade of FD vehicles goes screaming down our street. Almost every time, it's a bum whose shopping cart has fallen over, or some wino passed out on the sidewalk, or a fender-bender -- but most often a false alarm.

I once went out and filmed a particularly galling example where no fewer than SEVEN fire trucks responded to a false alarm on Geary. I asked the battallion chief how much it cost every time they rolled out such a large fleet of vehicles for a false alarm. He looked at me like Joe McCarthy examining a commie and said "I doesn't cost anything but the fuel". What a lie!

It's a MASSIVE waste of money. They could send out just one vehicle (say, one of their SUVs) with one or two firemen in it, to assess the incident, before rolling 2 or 3 full-sized trucks. But that wouldn't require them to keep high staffing and to be able to point to how many "calls" they go on in any given day. It's staffing that costs, and the inflated numbers they get from claiming they're needed for going out on these calls -- 95% of the time when they're not even needed -- that's to blame.

CHANGE THE POLICY.