"Santa Monica is one of the greatest cities in the State of California. The municipal workforce is the lifeblood of our city. In order to maintain premier services to our residents, we must have employees that are invested in the future success of our community. With about 2,200 employees being represented by 13 labor unions, it is challenging to work efficiently, but anything worth having takes hard work. Our current city budget has the means to accommodate a wide range of employees, and investing in our employees is investing in ourselves. I strongly believe in choosing employment over contracts whenever possible."
Oct. 1, 2014 Nick Boles

"Santa Monica has a bloated, overpaid employee count that has staff scrambling for higher and denser development projects in order to pay for their salaries and pensions. Santa Monica averages the highest paid and largest city staff per capita in California. Yes, we provide great services to our residents and visitors but so do many other comparable cities.

In 2012 we averaged 24.29 staff members per 1000 residents. We can compare that to Santa Barbara at 11.32, Berkeley at 13.02, Huntington Beach at 5.10, Ventura at 5.61 and Newport Beach at 10.33 staff members per 1000 residents. Our City Manager's gross pay including benefits for 2012 was $472,882.00 while the City Manager of Pasadena (a city with 50,000 more residents than Santa Monica) earned $355,927.56 and the Santa Barbara City Administrator earned $312,053.63. Add to that the fifty (yes, 50) employees who took home over $300,000 in 2012 and you will find that we're a city that’s clearly out of control.

Our staff are supposed to be serving our residents, yet it often seems that they are serving themselves at our expense. Let's get this under control. We can begin by adjusting the salary of the next City Manager and hiring an outside auditor to thoroughly evaluate waste in our local government. We can also make sure that the city employees that are hired and retained to work on our behalf are at reasonable, comparable salaries. There is no excuse for introducing large developments that do not fit the character and scale of our city in order to pay staff salaries. Further, it appears that our staff and City Council seemingly feel that our pockets are ones that they can continually pick. There is no excuse for increasing taxes while our city budget seems to have no boundaries."
Oct. 1, 2014 Phil Brock

"While there are always small adjustments in the number of employees depending upon the department and the year in question, this question seems to imply we should have a substantial decrease in the number of municipal employees (and hence a substantial shrinking of local government services). That's why I answered no.

Santa Monica currently provides a high level of service to its 90,000 residents. That requires more employees than cities that don't provide such a high level of services. We can always say we can do 'less with more.' But there are practical limits to that approach.

Santa Monica's large budget and its number of employees also stems from the fact that we are a regional/world tourist destination and a sub-regional jobs center. We also have a pier, airport, interstate freeway and two major hospitals. Our normal weekday daytime population is approximately 250,000. On some weekends, the number swells far beyond that. We both profit from this influx and have to manage it.

As important as the number of employees who are providing services to us, is to ensure that our budget priorities reflect the needs and aspirations of our residents. As a Councilmember, I would work to ensure that."
Oct. 1, 2014 Michael Feinstein

"I support bringing workers in house whenever possible and not outsourcing workers to private companies, and I support the recent council decision to review the outsourcing policy (during the discussion of outsourcing of custodial workers), in order to bring in custodial workers and keep more jobs in house. I support maintaining an adequate level of staff necessary to perform the various jobs required by the City including protecting public health and safety, improving environmental sustainability, monitoring and reporting, and to carry out the robust programs the City implements. While sometimes there is a need for temporary workers for limited, specific jobs, they should have benefits that are appropriate for that assignment including healthcare benefits and promotional opportunities the way permanent long-term employees do."
Oct. 1, 2014 Jennifer Kennedy

"We should only have what we need. We should only have the services and the city employees that the city needs to function, and not a layer more. Some areas are overstaffed while the SM fire department hasn't added on a single firefighter in nearly two decades. In 2006 when I first ran for city council, we had one city employee for every 42 residents. In 2012, we had one city employee for every 31 residents. The numbers seem to be increasing with no end in sight."
Oct. 1, 2014 Terence Later

"One reason Santa Monica is such a wonderful place to live is the broad and deep range of public services our city provides. Even our magnificent natural resources, such as the beach, require stewardship and hard work to remain clean, safe, and enjoyable.

Public services are delivered by public employees. The vast majority of city employees serve in working-class jobs, where the stability of their city paychecks enables them to become the secure middle class that is the backbone of any healthy community.

Without their hard work, your trash wouldn't get picked up, your buses wouldn't run, and your parks wouldn't be maintained. City employees supervise your children at our after-school programs, and bury your dead at Woodlawn Cemetery.

The engagement and dedication of Santa Monica City employees makes ours a better city. Reducing the number of workers by outsourcing jobs diminishes that commitment, and is a policy I oppose.

I have always been prudent about hiring and expansion. Santa Monica is a tight ship with a triple-A bond rating. I'm committed to continuing to provide residents with first class city services — and the face on that promise is a city employee."
Oct. 1, 2014 Kevin McKeown

"By increasing the revenue of the city we should look for untrained city employees that should be better retrained for more suitable positions. There is a lot of work to be done in the city, we need skilled and dedicated workers to face the demands of growth we are likely to experience in the next decade. We are faced with an inappropriate allocation of Human Resources."
Oct. 1, 2014 Zoë Muntaner