"Maybe $75,000 a year." "Yearly salary around 60k." "Oh, probably around $60,000 to 70,000." Most people have no idea how much public employees make, or how their tax dollars are being spent on those positions. "Would you be surprised to know they make about 100k? Yeah, that's a lot." But, if learning how much a Salinas police officer is earning doesn't surprise you, maybe finding out how much many of our public employees make in overtime might.
Salinas City Manager Ray Corpuz says, "Fire had $2.4 million worth of overtime, so it's a huge issue." That's because while a fire captain in Salinas makes about $80,000 to $100,000, some are making up to 80-thousand dollars on top of that in overtime.
Salinas Fire Deputy Chief Brett Loomis says, "Is the number high and can we get it under control a little bit better? Yes, once we get more staffing in place, and we need to cause we're working our firefighters a lot." And those aren't even the biggest numbers we saw.