Bob Calaway: Don’t trust figures you get from Transparent California
Re “Atwater facing a financial crisis” (Letters, March 14): The writer states a rookie Atwater police officer exceeds a salary, with benefits, of $117,000. His information source came from internet website called “Transparent California.”
In 2015 this source listed Atwater Officers, and I noticed several very questionable bits of information. The source listed Atwater as having 167 employees. In 2015, the City of Atwater had been reduced to 76 employees. I counted the overtime listed by this source for each patrol officer. Just for the patrol officers the total overtime cost was $333,000. This amount was over double what was paid for overtime by our city in 2015.
The majority of overtime cost was for officers working shifts to cover a major shortage of officers who patrol our city to protect our citizens. On July 1, 2016 a six-year merit salary schedule was approved and posted on the city website. I found a first-year rookie police officer would have a salary of $53,846. Benefits would be approximately $16,154 for an annual total salary of $70,000. Officers pay into federal and state taxes, for medical insurance and into a retirement program.
Bob Calaway, Atwater
Editor’s note: Transparent California is part of the Nevada Policy Research Institute.
This story was originally published March 23, 2017 at 4:51 PM with the headline "Bob Calaway: Don’t trust figures you get from Transparent California."