By Paul Losch
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About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mai...
(More)About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mainly in the Bay Area with different companies. My former wife went back to medical school after we had been married a few years, and we moved into married student housing at Stanford, had our two now adult children while she was a medical student, and moved into Palo Alto when she started her Residency. Been here ever since. As my kids were going through the Palo Alto schools, I was actively involved in their activities, most notably head umpire for Palo Alto Little League and 9 years as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, among other activities. My kids both are grown, my son teaches 5th grade locally, and my daughter, fluent in Mandarin, is working in China. I sold the business I owned and ran for 8 years in 2012, worked on the Obama campaign, and am consulting for non-profit organizations, which gives me a nice, flexible schedule. Lots of stamps in my passport, and for fun, I like live performances &emdash; theater and music - and of course the Giants!
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This is a Third Rail Matter, and I understand that as I write this.
The retirement programs that Palo Alto and most other local government entities in California are actuarily unsustainable.
Game theory explains this quite well, and over the last 40 years, the benefits and other compensation very fine municipal employees have received was based on keeping competetive with alternative employers for those they represented, less on accounting for the imperatives in the community they worked for at any present time.
Have things wratcheted up too much?
This is also the model, at least theoretically, in the private sector. Although I perceive the private sector in these parts as being generous when they can be, they also are able to get out of obligations when it detracts from their ability to focus on their core values and mission.
Going forward, what is the right model for CPA employees that attract motivated and high caliber people, and account for the fact that we may need to offer a different compensation and benefits and retirement approach than has been the case in the last few decades?
I will not pass judgement on contracts Palo Alto has had in the past, but I will posit that now is the time to challenge everyone--voters, tax payers, City employees, City management, current City Council Members, and those who aspire to be on City Council.
