Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Unaffordable Sheriff

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The editorial in today's Post does not give an opinion on the escalating and unaffordable costs of the PBSO, but it gives the facts of the matter.

Read about it... and how all of Palm Beach County can't afford to fix its infrastructure--roads are literally going to pot. The County Board of Commissioners had suggested a one-half cent sales tax increase to pay for road repairs as they never can say "no" to the sheriff and his budget increases.

Not only in Palm Beach County is this happening and commissioners giving the sheriff just about everything he wants, but Lake Worth has the exact same problems with the sheriff taking nearly 70% of our operating budget. Most of the costs are attributed to increased pensions and health care.

Crime just seems to go up right along with their paychecks...maybe it's time to look into private security. If you think about it, there is something terribly wrong when cities can no longer afford public safety.

3 comments:

Weetha Peebull said...

Detroit is trying private security.
Pros and Cons:
https://www.google.com/search?q=private+cops+detroit&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's time we start tying cops paychecks to the amount of crime in their districts. Crime goes up- their pay goes down . Crime goes down ,their pay goes up. That's what they do to our teachers. Hey Ric Bradshaw, thanks for painting over all the graffiti ! NOT !

Anonymous said...

I think most of these increases goes to cover personnel costs, meaning pensions, health care, etc. The pension problem is a real drain, in most cases police can retire after 25 years of service b/c they are special risk. That means that in many instances a police officer will receive pension payments longer than they actually worked.

No idea how to solve that problem, police and fire are considered special risk b/c of risk of injury, stress, etc. So maybe they need to retire after 25 years, and changing pensions for LEO will never be embraced by either party, just way too much political risk.