Pension Spiking Leaves a Bad Taste

* If Huntington Beach residents have had enough of the retirement salary spiking, if they do not think it is fair that the taxpayers pay 100% of city employees’ retirement contributions, and if they are sick and tired of having a special tax levied on their property to pay for all of this, then they should help us amend the city charter to put a stop to it.

Citizens Against Retirement Tax is circulating a petition to put a charter amendment on the November ballot to repeal the special property tax and to force city employees to pay a portion of their own retirement contributions.

JIM L. BANKS

Chairman

Citizens Against Retirement Tax

Huntington Beach

* To say I was furious when I read about the pension spiking plans by local cities and public agencies understates the point.

I can only imagine the anger of other taxpayers who don’t have the luxury of inflating their salaries by an average of $79,000 in their last year, as 34 employees in Huntington Beach did, so that their pensions can be heftier.

I am a public employee, working as a faculty member at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. I am concerned, of course, that people reading about such abuses will attribute these activities to everyone who works in the public sector.

I can assure you that such perks aren’t available to any faculty members with whom I associate. The only way I can “spike” my less-than-adequate state teacher retirement is the old-fashioned way--I save.

STEVEN J. GOETZ

Irvine