Background

CONTENTS


The information on this page is as follows:

1. Employee and Pension Information
2. City Financial Information
3. Contracts with County for Police Services
4. Sheriff's Department Annual Reports
5. RDA and Successor RDA Financial Information
6. Yucaipa Financial Information

EMPLOYEE AND PENSION INFORMATION


This page provides information on the city most of which you will not find on the city's cleansed website.  We believe there should be a complete, wall-to-wall house cleaning given what has occurred, i.e. lies, corruption, and ineptness.  We obtained resumes, pay amounts, pension information, and payroll registers. As expected nearly all employees have no other experience than working or government. There is virtually no private sector experience. First we want to put some faces to names.



This is Joe Hughes (on the right), City Manager, his wife Betty Hughes, City Clerk (on the left), and Chuck "the cheese," Dantuono, City Treasurer (in the center). He is the money man. They are obviously taking a well deserved break.  The three are paid about $600K per year and effectively run the city.  We believe Joe and Betty's cozy abode is in Redlands.



This is a better picture of Betty.  This may be one of her standard daily outfits.  It leaves no doubt that Joe found her skill set very qualified.


Looks like another well deserved break. GO TEAM!



This is Joe in an action shot.  It sure is reassuring knowing Joe is at the helm working for what is best for all of us. He is worth every penny he is paid. (LOL!)



This is our police chief "Big" Tony Dececio. He makes around $321,528 per year, has his own secretary, and has his car paid for by the city. He ran the Coffee with a Cop program in 2015 attempting to "butter up" the public for a tax increase. At the time he claimed the program had nothing to do with the tax increase. Later we obtained emails related to the tax increase and he was part of the planning. The Coffee with a Cop was a sham and wasted tax payer's money. He can be found many mornings shooting the breeze in his Hawaiian shirt or sweat pants and flirting with the la baristas at Starbucks on Baseline by the freeway.  Lastly Tony doesn't live Highland. He lives in Yucaipa where they have the same size force and they didn't ask for a tax increase. 


This is Larry Mainez. He is what is called the "Community Planning Director."  I guess he is the city's visionary. He makes about $180K a year.  This may be him pretending to work in the private sector. It probably scared him badly. But we can sure count on Larry to see what is best for us. High Five Larry!


This is Ernie Wong.  He is the Public Works Director. He makes about $200K.  This is him receiving an award.  They LOVE to pat each other on the back and pass out awards AND pass out money to.


This is Melissa Morgan, Public Services Director.  She makes $118K a year. Looks like she is receiving an award.  Doesn't she look happy? Who could blame her.  She is only a high school graduate who is making $118K per year. May be the city could try to keeping the city open Monday - Friday instead of closing every Friday.  I guess with city employee's workload, they need this day with no distractions, like serving the citizens.


This is Jeani Stephens.  She doesn't work for the city, but the city threw out of her home: JeaniStephensHitTheStreets.  GOOD JOB!  One would think some of the $63M in the RDA could have been used to help her out, but we are just the citizens and what do we know?


Finally, neither of these individuals work for the city, but no matter what you have heard they were just good "friends."

What They Make

Here is the what they make: CityEmployeePay. Notice that of their total pay 43% is for benefits! While McCallon and the rest of the council claim the city is broke and can't afford more police protection, they somehow scrapped together enough money to give our poor over worked and and underpaid employees a 9.8% pay increase over the next two years:

These numbers come from the last two budgets and from the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 6/30/2015: SupportForAnnualIncrease.  The typical city employee will be making $122,673 and this is with lifetime income because of the lavish pensions.  The council passing out these raises while at the same time claiming the city is broke and can't afford additional officers.  This gets to the heart of the matter.  If the citizen's needs go first, then the employees should not be given a raise.  These raises would purchase two additional officers per year. 


REMEMBER THIS:


According to John Timmer, Larry McCallon, Penny Lilburn, Jody Scott, and Sam Racadio the needs of the overpaid, sloth city employees are more important than the citizen's needs. Nothing speaks as loud or as clear as this.


 RESUMES

So who are these motley city employees?  Here are there resumes: Resumes and this is Chuck "the cheese" Dantuono's, City Treasurer, application: ChuckApplication. Elizabeth Hutchins is Betty Hughes. Joe probably recognized Betty's "special" talents and even though she was an administrative assistant, she had the needed skills for the City Clerk position.

PAID TIME OFF BENEFITS

A significant amount of each employees pay is paid time off benefits.  This allows them to paid fully while at the same time taking significant time off.  In addition, they get ALL the holidays off.  Even with all of this, the city closes down every Friday. 

Here are the employees accrued time off benefits: EmployeeTimeOffBenefits. We understand that an employee retires they get paid off for their paid time off balances including sick leave.  These time off balances are just another retirement benefit.

Their pensions

WARNING: THIS SECTION SHOULD NOT BE READ IF YOU ARE SQUEMISH OR EASILY NAUSEATED. THE CITY IS EMPLOYING THE STRATEGY OF "IBG/YBG: I'LL BE GONE, YOU'LL BE GONE." THIS IS ALSO KNOW AS "KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD" OR "IT'S OUR KID'S PROBLEM."

We are in no way experts on governmental pensions.  We do know that pension costs bankrupted the City of San Bernardino and a lot of other cities. Here are some good articles:

 CaliforniaFacesPensionDeath
CaliforniaInsolvent
CaliforniaDeepDebt

So what have council promised our "hard working," dedicated, and honest work force?  Here is what they have committed the tax payers to pay (From the 6/30/2015 Comprehensive Annual Report p 63):

Most of the current employees were hired prior to January 1, 2013.  This means ALL city employees can retire at 55 and receive guaranteed 2% of their final pay, and this includes ALL types of pay.  The employee contributes 7% of his or her pay to the plan and the city contributes 16.571%.  This is the reason that benefits are 43% of pay.   This plan is referred to broadly as a "Defined Benefit Plan" and it guarantees payments to retirees. These are almost exclusively used in the public sector.  On the other hand, the private sector pensions are known as "Defined Contribution Plans."  These are 401K plans that don't guarantee retirees a certain benefit.

 So what is the IMPACT of these promises?  That is simple.  Here is what the city owes it current and past employees to cover the promised pensions:

The city participates in the CALPERS system and according to CALPERS as of 6/30/2015 the city is underfunded the pensions by $3,047,168.  But wait that is too optimistic.  This assumes that CALPERS' will return 7.5% on its investments. The return for 2015 was only 2.4% and CALPERS is going to lower it official return to 6.5%.  Assuming a more realistic 5% return, the real unfunded liability is around $7-8 Million!  This will only get worse since current employees can retire young and will be replaced by employees who can retire young. People are living longer. This means tax payers will need to finance a large group of retirees for the rest of their lives.  Since this can't be done this is known as "BANKRUPTCY."


 But do the current council members care? They don't!!!!  It is referred as a "IBG/YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone” strategy.

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We obtained the 2014 CALPERS report used to determine the $3,047,168 (CALPERSREPORT_20140630).  What is SHOCKING is this:


Notice the $14,643,867.  This is the amount CALPERS calculates that will be needed to pay all the promised pensions to the current and past city employees!!!  This is on top of their current pay. The amount really means that once you hire a governmental employee you employ this person for the rest of his or hers LIFE. Highland has relatively few employees and the  amount is abhorrent. The $11,596,699 is the amount the city has contributed with the difference being $3,047,168.  As we stated, this is far too optimistic.  CALPERS will most likely return around 5%.  Folks we are in for it thanks to the current council.

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We need to end these pensions and put everyone on a Defined Contribution Plan as has been done at other cities: DefinedContributionPlans. Furthermore we need to DEMAND the city fund all the unfunded liabilities now. We want the problem front and center so they must face the real problem they created and not "Kick the Problem Down The Road" or "Leave It for our Kids To Solve."  These pensions are IMMORAL.

 Here are the current pensions the city is paying: CurrentPensions. It includes Mr Racadio's $176K per year (as of 2014). Recall he was the prior city manager and then the job was given to Joe Hughes.

Just as a side note this is John Timmer's state pension: TimmerPension.  He has been part of the council since 1992!  Since he doesn't have to work and he worked for the forestry department, I guess that qualifies him.  At best Mr Timmer is incompetent and at worst he is dishonest.  He was fully in for the tax increase and lied to promote it.  We can do better.

CITY FIANANCIAL INFORMATION


This is the city's annual reports and budgets.  Reading these requires training in accounting and in governmental accounting.  Even with this background these reports are hard to work with.  Send us questions and we will try to answer them.

 COMPREHENSIVE ANNUAL FINANCIAL REPORTS


BUDGETS



Budget 2011-2013

PAYROLL REGISTERS

PayrollPeriod_03112016

PayrollPeriod_02162016

We are trying to get the last payroll registers for 2014 and 2015.  This will tell us how much productive time us being used vs what we are paying.


SHERIFF CONTRACTS



SheriffContract_2014_2015

Notice the city employs 22 deputies and the cost for each is about $165,500 per year.  There is enough money to easily add 1-4 additional deputies.  Instead money is being wasted on pensions, general waste, inefficiencies, and probably theft.  Notice the overhead costs too.

SHERIFF ANNUAL REPORTS


SheriffAnnualReport_20150630

SheriffAnnualReport_20140630

SheriffAnnualReport_20100630

These reports were obtain from sheriff's website: Sheriff'sWebSite.  These reports are important because the contradict the information in the survey used in an attempt to raise taxes.


COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL REPORTS - REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY (RDA)


The city doesn't publish for the public the financial reports of the RDA. We had to ask for these and we are still waiting for the reports for the successor agency,  200. All RDAs closed in 2012 and all assets were turned over to successor agencies.  This lack of disclosure is not surprising given that council put its citizens in debt over $63M dollars and there is millions of unaccounted for money. (UPDATE 7/12/2016: The Successor Agency financials are in the CAFR for fiscal year ending 6/30/2012 - 6/30/2015.  The are in the Fiduciary Funds area, around page 30) 

 RDA_FinancialReport_20110630

 RDA_FinancialReport_20100630

 RDA_FinancialReport_20090630

 RDA_FinancialReport_20080630

 RDA_FinancilaReport_20070630

 RDA_FinancialReport_20060630

CITY OF YUCAIPA INFORMATION


YUCAIPA-ComprehensiveAnnualReport_2015

YUCAIPA-ComprehensiveAnnualReport_2014
YUCAIPA-SheriffContract_2015-2016
YUCAIPA-SheriffContract_2014-2015
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