On July 27, 2022, at the Oxnard City Council meeting, again, as was the case three years ago, the Oxnard city staff misled the city council and the public with erroneous cost data for the city’s employee benefit contribution increases.
Human Resources (HR) stated that for the Exec, IOUE, OPOA, and SEIU labor bargaining units, the total estimated costs for the new three-year term (FY22/23, FY23/24, and FY24/25) would be $12,738,520 with a General Fund (GF) impact of $8,087,342. This total was derived by adding all of the ‘delta’ cost increases for the three years. If math isn’t your favorite thing, that just means the city staff pretended the total cost in the second year was only the difference between the first year cost and the second year cost…as if the first year’s increase never happened, and the third year cost was only the difference between the second year cost and the third year cost.
This is a deceptive method of describing the total cumulative cost impact to the taxpayer, but it is a sadly common technique bureaucrats use to hide the total cost. Oxnard city staff did the same thing three years ago, at which time the public demonstrated…
