This is a totally different take on 6 figure salaries that this website has written about because this story in the Times appeared to be highlighting Fire Chief salaries. They stated the Fire Chief was paid slightly more than Mayor Mike McGinn. I am the first to say that public employees salaries are so bloated, out of line, greedy (rest of descriptions are not fit for family reading). BUT, that being said, I want to just stick to the Fireman. I have to defend them completely. If people were paid for the good they do for the community and citizens Fireman would be right at the top. No matter what disaster, whether a little kitchen grease fire or an earthquake they are there. They are also basically on call 24/7 thus a lot of overtime gets racked up. Their job is dangerous but lets not view their salaries on that alone. They are there because they want to be there, they can quit anytime they want. If they cant stand the “heat get out of the kitchen”. That being said they are doing a job that our lives depend on. If ANYONE deserves a high salary it is them and the Policeman. Without them our lives would be in jeopardy.
This was a perfect time for the Times to print their salaries and the perfect time to ask if you would rather pay $160,000 to a Fire Chief, or $600,000 to the Port of Seattle CEO, or $224,000 to the new Superintendant of Schools, $700.000 to the new President of UW. $1.7 million to the UW Football coach etc. Would any of these people be able to help you in any way if you needed help? Would you miss them if everyone quit today because they thought they were working to hard? They are simply milking the system big time.
I think its time to start thinking what services we can do without and cut the pay of the useless bunch of CEO’s. Managers and Presidents of company’s that are taxpayer supported. It would be fun to see a debate of a Fire Chief and the CEO of the Port of Seattle to see which one performs the most necessary service and rate their pay on that basis.
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I noticed the times article that showed all the top salaries for our officials and clearly we are wasting a lot of money on these people. I can't believe how much we wasted on the seattle education superintendant and the port of seattle ceo. We could have 8 ceos for that price and we would get 8x the work done (for less money).