These fees are an appropriate way to reduce the budget gap. For many years Mountain View has been providing MUCH bigger subsidies than other cities for these services. Even with these adjustments, the fees will only be the same or less than other cities.

For the long term, Mountain View needs fees to roughly match those of other cities - and needs EXPENSES to match those of other cities (or be lower).

But we also need to make BIG changes to city employee contracts when they come up for renewal. In particular, the health and retirement benefit costs are MUCH bigger than what people get working in the private sector, and we cannot afford it.

Mountain View Council should work with other cities to get a widespread agreement that Bay area cities will reduce health and retirement benefits to a single standard rate - and ideally change retirement to a 401K type approach where cities match employee contributions and do not have some undefined long-term liability.


(Editor's Note: for the full Town Square conversation please go here: Web Link