Looking at Who Contributes to CALPERS

It is very unfortunate how people attack our police officers, council members or city staff regarding their retirement, or pensions, while not once mentioning the fact that our civil servants contribute to their own pensions from every single one of their paychecks. Aside from the fact that our officers go out every single day and put their lives on the line, every paycheck they receive has a good sum taken from it and injected into CALPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System), so when they retire they can receive that money back.  

A big part that I do not understand is why are members of city council being blamed for the CALPERS system? They are not the ones responsible for creating this retirement system. If you do some research, you would find out that CALPERS was established in 1932 and it is the largest public employee retirement system in the nation with 1.9 million members. Our city did not simply come up with this system.

The process is simple: You work, money is taken from your own paycheck and, when you retire, you get that money back. The members of our City Council were elected by this community to make decisions according to the challenges and conditions that are presented in the real world, not for things based on unrealistic and hypothetical wishful thinking. They also need to honor agreements and contracts that the previous city council has made while working with city management to offer competitive employment contracts within the industry to be able to recruit, and retain, qualified individuals who are willing to put their lives on the line. 

Something that no one talks about are the things that these officers must deal with daily. Our officers see things and deal with situations that no person should ever have to experience. They are exposed to these situations every single day. You don’t think this has any effect on them or their families? What price can we put on that?

I understand that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I respect that, but please let’s not use the courageous men and women of the Glendale Police Dept. for political games to push for unrealistic “solutions.”

Sam S. Manoukian 

Glendale