I don't know the breakdowns, but the total is on page 65 of the annual budget. (BTW, could you all please consider using a format like PDF or DJVU? It's easier to view it by downloading the whole thing instead of flipping through scanned pages.)
$67,118 for five people. $13,423.60 per member, on average. The people can now put away their pitchforks - there may be some duds on there, but at least they're not being like the Bell city council.
I went to neighboring city Maywood's website, and it was out of date, with no annual report for 2009. They had one report from 2008.
The total expenditure for the City Council was $133,823, for five members. Again, can't tell what the breakdown is, but the average is $26,764 per member, or twice Rosemead's.
The numbers are on page 42 of 2008 Final City FS 2008.pdf.
Of course, 2008 was the start of the fiscal crisis. It's possible salaries were lowered for 2009.
It's not the salaries that'll
It's not the salaries that'll kill you; it's the benefits--travel, health, dental, retirement.
So even after Bell gets their overpaid three to quit, the cost to all taxpayers (not just those from Bell) for the retirement and health benefits will be many times bigger than the salaries.
Claw back time
Can they levy a special tax on pensions to claw back that money?
Well, I suppose anything is possible
It would be nifty if the state legislature passed a bill imposing a surtax on public pensions over, say $200,000 a year. That could recoup some of the ridiculous cost of these Bell pensions.
BTW, the LA Times reports that many of us (almost certainly including Rosemead residents) will be helping to pay for these pensions.
Where's that Tran Card
I remember that John Tran wanted to put expenses on a credit card that would report the data to some website or something.
Maybe it's time to revive that idea.
A credit card that publishes spending to a website would be a nice "fun" feature. We could watch politicians spending our money.
Tran is radioactive
No matter how good an idea it is, if it's seen as a John Tran idea, there's no way the Neaderthals that run the city are going to support it.
It would be interesting to
It would be interesting to have some real-time accounting data of government officials. We should be able to see when checks are written, and credit cards are used. The technology exists - there's a site called blippy that does the credit card part. The checks could be coordinated with ADP and the banks.