Do City Workers Deserve Top Pay?

* We recently read that many of the cities in Orange County have possibly 25 employees making over $100,000 per year.

In the opinion of many of us who came out of industry, this is creating an “elite class,” without justification.

Read the 1996 career guide by U.S. News & World Report.

Top management jobs in architecture at $61,500. This job requires management skills, as well as creativity, and the ability to cope with competition. How many municipal positions have these requirements?

Professors at $63,500; undergraduate deans at $57,740; management consultants at $67,000, chief video engineers at $45,430.

Compare to admirals, operating battle fleets, at under $100,000 salary.

The rationale is always, “We have to bring salaries in our city equivalent to others.”

With 31 cities in Orange County, the effect is a bootstrapping process, which could go through the ceiling.

It has. The system is out of control.

The taxpayers are not a bottomless pit of financial resources.

LEE J. MOHLER

Costa Mesa

* You published letters about the salaries paid to Huntington Beach public employees.

All agreed that there is something drastically wrong with that system.

We also read, almost daily, of the frequent scandals in state, county and village governments.

So tell me why the Republicans in Washington keep pushing to get big government (federal) off our back and turn most functions over to the (unknown, unaccountable) politicians on the state and local levels?

J. S. GREENBERG

Newport Beach