Salary Watch: Goleta Sanitary District

Doesn't everybody get promoted to general manager for a few days before retirement?

You've got to be kidding! The general manager makes almost twice that of the other 2? Better raise their salaries to make it more fair. NOT!!! Once again, a tax/rate payer rip-off with ridiculous retirement benefits. THIS HAS GOT TO STOP! Time for reform or revolt.

I'd like to know a few things about the pensions and the individuals who will retire.

1) Do spouse's receive all or part of the pension benefits if the retire dies? If so, for how long?

2) How many years has each person worked for the city and how many years until expected retirement? (If future earns/pensions could be calculated at a future retirement it would also be nice to know.)

and these people call their job "public service". they are behind us all the way and indeed revolt is called for, sieze their properties and let them ride vespas not limos or humvees

Is this the City of Bell all over again. Public Employees are having to deal with furloughs and the GM makes more than the average public employee will make in several years. Just think everyone, every time you flush your toilet, this guy gets richer!

Are they retiring soon? I need a job!

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaigosa makes $195,237.61 after having taken a 16% salary cut. The GM of the sanitary district makes $224,016? What's wrong with this picture? Mayor of the City of Los Angeles with over 4 million people and thousands of employees...maybe it's time for Azoury to take a salary cut. Why have we not known about this before now? Kinda like the City of Bell, until its a crisis and too late.But we can still speak up! Time to show up on the doorstep and start asking some questions.

So let me get this straight. Bob Rizzo at the City of Bell makes $787,637 with 161 employees. That amounts to $4,892.15 per employee. It was not easy to find out that Goleta Sanitary District has 31 employees. They do not have any information about salaries or employees on their website. Talk about transparency! Anyway, at $224,016 for the GM, that comes to $7,226.32 per employee, a whole lot less than poor Rizzo who is taking the heat. Looks like the story should be about Azoury, not poor Rizzo.I agree with BeachBoy.

Correction: GM at the Goleta Sanitary District makes a whole lot MORE than poor Rizzo per employee. see my previous post.

What purpose does dividing a CEO's salary by the number of employees serve?

If you have a 10 person engineering company, and the boss makes $100k, that's $10,000/per employee -- more than even Mr. Azoury! (And a below market income for the head of an engineering department).

I think many of these public tantrums regarding public sector employee wages and benefits would benefit from a more detailed list of comparisons with private sector jobs, more details on responsibilities, educational requirements and professional standards and ongoing evaluations, job experience and tenure, and required knowledge and/or exceptional skill sets.

To match up salaries is often a misleading exercise.

Chester, God love you for that answer. Please go look at comparable statistics for large waste water treatment facilities in any major metropolitan area. Also, please look at what we’re paying the mayor, sheriff, and district attorney and ask yourself if want to pay more for processing your excrement than you do for your justice and safety. I work in the private sector so I am completely familiar with revenue per employee and other key performance indicator calculations. I assume you must be happy paying him x dollars per flush and adding another 5 % to that next year. Here is a man with absolutely zero risk in the public sector making more than most CEO’s salary. He doesn’t have responsibility for the performance of the company, has a steady revenue stream from the public, and has known technology that hasn’t changed in 50 years. Any private sector CEO in the entire country would take this cushy deal.

So the real question unanswered in the article is what to do about these agregious takings from the public?

It would be nice if the Indy staff would interview the people that authorized these salary levels and make them defend the amounts!

The typical response and defense is that the public entities point at each others compensation packages and claim that as the basis for the one upmanship game of our county deserves as much or more. Theses people are ruining the State of Cali for their own personal greed and we are all paying for it.

Would you want to open a business in this state knowing how the tax money is spent?

Come on Indy...Do a hard hitting expose like the LA Times did on Bell and you might win a Pulitzer! (I know... that and $4 will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks).

Seriously, these are the things revolutions are made of.

"Oh, Mr. public official, the peasents of Cali have no bread or money to pay taxes!"
"Let them eat cake!"

I assume the managers do not have civil service protection, so they could be let go by the GSD Board at any time, and the jump in salary between OM and GM might be excessive. The GM salary should probably be 15% higher than the subordinate, as the incentive to take the next step and deal with the board. The GM job might require being a Registered Engineer with X years of experience, and that is another factor to boost the salary. Consulting Civil Engineers, that the GM would deal with, are typically at least $200/hr or $400K per year, but projects are not usually continuous. So, overall, the GM salary, and with the location on the SB coast, could be appropriate.

The CalPers retirement costs at 20% of salary is higher than the 12.4% required for Social Security, but that cost changes yearly with investment returns, which are lagging due to the Wall Street shenanigans. CalPers should be offered to all workers as an alternative to SSI.

As trillion$ are doled out to Wall Street, it is hard to get upset at any normal public or private salary & retirement packages.

We do not have enough information to make a judgment here. What are their duties and responsibilities? What do people with similar duties make in other places? Also, making $100,000 a year in Santa Barbara means that you are barely middle-class and can not afford a house unless your spouse makes a good salary and you save for many years. The cost of housing has to be taken into consideration in any comparisons to what others make in similar positions elsewhere. $100,000 will get you A LOT further in Bell, CA than it will here in Santa Barbara. If you want qualified people, you are going to have to make it worth their while to live in such an overpriced place.