Laguna Should Do What New San Diego Mayor is Doing – Cut Payroll Expenses

See Sacramento Bee column by Daniel Weintraub: San Diego beginning to dig out
“Jerry Sanders, sworn in last week as this troubled city's new mayor, …He has ordered a salary freeze, promised to lay off 100 middle managers and perhaps up to 10 percent of the entire work force and is considering a one-week work furlough.”
"We're at a point where we can't provide everything we've been providing with the money we have," he said. "So you either raise taxes or you get skinny. ... I'm confident we can slim down in order to make the structural cuts that we really need."
“While San Diego's fiscal ordeal may be the worst of any city in California, the city is far from alone in dealing with rising pension obligations.”
“Sanders has also proposed adopting a new retirement program for future employees, even though the savings from such a change wouldn't materialize for many years. He says he favors a smaller guaranteed benefit with an individual retirement plan for each employee similar to the 401(k) plans now common in the private sector. He also wants to raise the retirement age from 55 to 60 for general employees and from 50 to 55 for public safety workers.”
"We're putting a pretty good chunk of the city's revenues into benefits for employees," he said. "It's not the employees' fault. It's the city's fault for the way it handled it in the past. But I think we need to get away from that and start realizing that our reason for existing is to provide services."