Another baseless attack on public workers
To the editor:
As a proud Las Vegas Fire & Rescue captain, serving the citizens of Las Vegas for 28 years, I feel compelled to respond to your Aug. 19 editorial, "Public employee pay" and the city survey comparing compensation.
It appears Las Vegas city management wants to justify the $360,000 cost of a salary survey to the Review-Journal and the public. Your editorial board has taken the bait in your quest to make public employees look bad in your newspaper, which you attempt to do every chance that you get.
Why did the city of Las Vegas management not use existing city employees to do the research and study? Did the Review-Journal ask? That money could have funded seven new firefighter positions for a year.
I would also like to clarify some false information in your editorial. City of Las Vegas firefighters do not routinely receive an annual step increase unless they are a new employee or newly promoted to a position. The majority of the department receives a negotiated raise each year. My pay raise, as of July 1, 2008, was 3 percent. I would gladly switch the pay raises that I have received the past 10 years with the pay raises and bonuses given to current City Manager Doug Selby and Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell.
The cost of the Public Employees Retirement System pension is shared equally between the employer and employee. If the city pays more, then it negotiated with the bargaining unit for that to occur.
So, while the city of Las Vegas management has decided to use the Las Vegas Review-Journal to their advantage, other entities in the valley choose to conduct their business without the approval of your editorial board.
You have chosen to use only certain statistics out of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce study, conveniently excluding the information that shows Nevada ranks 45th in the nation for local government employees per 1,000 residents. We're doing more with less. At the same time, public employees, city firefighters and their families continue to spend their wages at Chamber of Commerce businesses, including paying 75 cents for a copy of the Review-Journal when a short time ago it only cost 50 cents.
So while you attack us as public employees, firefighters in the city of Las Vegas and elsewhere will continue to do what we do every day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We will serve the citizens to the best of our ability.
We are having a new fire academy in October, so if you want to be exposed to guns, knives, human waste, body fluids, blood-borne pathogens, tuberculosis, hepatitis, cancer-causing toxic chemicals and smoke, death, severe trauma injuries, stress, life-changing experiences and make life-and-death decisions, you should apply to take the test and hope to get hired.
Members of your editorial board can experience all this and more for $17.15 an hour after you graduate from the fire training academy.
The Review-Journal editorial board and the community should be thankful young women and men still have the calling to become a firefighter, the best job in the world.
Dean Fletcher
LAS VEGAS
THE WRITER IS PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIRE FIGHTERS LOCAL 1285.
No free rides
To the editor:
In response to your Wednesday article, "Welfare officials tighten assistance eligibility," about the change that will now deny Temporary Assistance for Needy Families payments for three months if recipients don't follow their personal plans by looking for work or going to school as agreed to:
What is the problem? None of the people in the article who complained about the change addressed the central issue: No responsible parent would allow this to happen to his family. A responsible parent would follow the plan as required.
If a person is severely disabled or mentally handicapped, I believe that is accounted for in their plan. To fail to live up to the plan and deny your family help is reprehensible -- on the part of the recipient.
Welfare was never meant to be a handout, but a hand up, a chance to get back on your feet. It is not, nor should it be, a free ride.
Sue Grue
LAS VEGAS
Who's really rich?
To the editor:
Somewhere in the midst of your scathing Thursday editorial ("Rich man, poor man") on the difference between Barack Obama's and John McCain's perception of wealth, you missed something very important: the news.
Turns out Sen. Obama was right. If you reference the 2007 wealth report by The Wall Street Journal, you find that having $1 million in assets or $250,000 in annual income puts you in the top 1 percent or 2 percent of the country. Sen. McCain's estimate -- $5 million in income -- means you're talking about the top .01 percent of the country.
Perhaps you're forgetting that taxes pay for things lsuch as good schools, new roads and care for the elderly. For those who aren't rich, like me, communal purchasing is the only way I'll ever experience such things for myself, my children or my elderly parents. Those who are rich, like, evidently, members of the Review-Journal editorial board, will have such things with or without taxes.
William Wolfs
LAS VEGAS
