by Michael D. Robbins
Director, Public Safety Project, PublicSafetyProject.org
January 19, 2011
Congratulations! We won again! Thank you for sending in your Proposition 218 Trash Fee Protest Ballots before the deadline. A total of 1,850 unverified protest ballots were sent to City Hall, and only a total of 1,439 verified protest ballots were needed to defeat the new residential trash collection fee. The City Council voted 3-2 at its January 18, 2011 meeting, to accept the unverified protest ballots as sufficient without having the City Clerk’s staff spend the time to open all the envelopes, verify that the ballots were properly completed and signed, and count the valid ones that are not duplicates from owners and tenants of the same property.
City Council member Don Brann made the motion to accept the unverified protest ballots as sufficient. Mayor Eric Busch tried to ignore the motion and said that the City Clerk would come back to the City Council with the results after the protest ballots were verified and counted. Council member Don Brann caught this apparent maneuver to avoid a vote and move on to the next agenda item, and he stated that he made a motion. Council member Carl Jacobson seconded the motion for discussion. After brief discussion, Council member Don Brann asked for a vote. Mayor Eric Busch and Mayor Pro Tem Bill Fisher voted “NO”, and Council members Don Brann, Carl Jacobson, and Suzanne Fuentes voted “Yes” on the motion.
This vote by mail election used a strange system where properties for which no Protest Ballot is completed, signed, and returned before the deadline COUNT AS YES VOTES, and Protest Ballots from both the owner and tenant(s) of the same property COUNT AS ONLY ONE NO VOTE.
The first year of the trash fee would have cost residents an estimated $560,700, which is less than the estimated $596,657 total compensation paid to former El Segundo Police Chief David Cummings in 2009 from all sources – including his city contract and pension income while working for the city after his retirement. This is an enormous amount of compensation for any city, but especially for the City of El Segundo, California, which has about 5.5 square miles and about 16,000 or 17,000 population.
This is our second victory in our effort to stop the City Council majority from imposing City of Bell-style taxes and fees on businesses and residents to pay to continue enriching City employee union members and their managers – especially the firefighter and police union members and their managers – with wildly excessive and unsustainable salaries, benefits, and pensions that threaten to bankrupt our city.
Our first victory was the defeat of Measure O on the November 2, 2010 election ballot by 55% “NO” to 45% “YES”. Measure O was the $4 million business Utility Users Tax increase that would have been passed on to the customers as a cost of doing business. Measure O would have increased business electricity, water, gas, and telephone Utility Users Taxes by $2 million per year for two years and then it would have sunset. It was put on the ballot by a 5-0 vote of the City Council as a misguided attempt to balance the city budget, and resolve a more than $8 million budget shortfall that was caused primarily by the wildly excessive and unsustainable salaries, benefits, and compensation of the firefighter and police union members and their managers.
El Segundo Police Officers' Association (ESPOA) Exposed