When I was 7, I thought this commercial had it goin' on.
After 42 years, my opinion hasn't changed. No Nox against it at all.
Thank you! Thank you very much -- I'm here all week.
The notion of an extended wage freeze is a sore point for city employees who feel they've become the whipping boy for all of the city's budget woes. Too frequently, they say, their paychecks become an easy target when revenues slow down.YEAH, THE MEAN, MEAN city fathers want to make Mr. Fire Union President take a pay freeze, thus making his widdle, biddy baby go hungry. So said the righteously indignant Mr. LeClair.
Employees say they deserve raises that let them keep pace with inflation.
“When you ask me to take zero percent in consecutive years, you're taking milk out of my baby's mouth and food off my table,” said Steve LeClair, president of the Omaha firefighters union.
In 2003, civilian workers in Local 251 accepted a virtual freeze. In 2004, police and firefighters had no raise.
The freezes helped avoid proposed layoffs, cuts in services and the closing of facilities. But the contracts also included raises in subsequent years and other costly provisions, some of which have contributed to the city's current $500 million shortfall in its police and fire pension fund.
Even considering those earlier freezes, the unions kept pace with inflation from 1997 to 2007. The cost of living rose an average 2.6 percent per year during that period, compared with average wage hikes of 2.6 percent for civilian workers, 2.8 percent for police and 3 percent for firefighters.
Jim Suttle's aides ignored the first rule of car shopping when picking the new mayor's SUV: Check the fine print.
The result: The lease on Suttle's Dodge Durango hybrid carries an interest rate of 24 percent.
That's nearly triple the average leasing rate and the rate paid for former Mayor Mike Fahey's leased SUV, based on a World-Herald review of both contracts.
The World-Herald reported last month that the Durango's annual payments were $15,717. That amount was later lowered by altering the payment schedule to $13,745. Even then, dozens of readers were left scratching their heads at the cost.
Suttle's spokesman defended the high interest rate, saying the city paid more to be able to return the SUV at a moment's notice, if needed, with no penalties. That's one feature of what's called a municipal lease, spokesman Ron Gerard said.
“It was one of the few options available,” Gerard said.
Suttle's transition team, however, didn't shop for other lease terms. Several readers asked why the city didn't buy the vehicle outright.
“The city doesn't have the money to buy vehicles,” Gerard said in an interview. “The city has an $11 million shortfall.”
Under the lease agreement, Omaha taxpayers will pay $14,000 in total interest over the four-year lease.
A leasing expert with the auto buying Web site Edmunds.com called a 24 percent rate “outrageous.”
“Just simply looking at it from the market perspective, it looks like they paid too much for the premium,” said Jesse Toprak, a senior Edmunds analyst.
In one of his first acts as incoming mayor, Suttle has leased a 2009 Dodge Durango Hybrid SUV for an annual cost of $15,717.
That’s $2,157 per year more than what former Mayor Mike Fahey paid to lease a 2008 Chrysler Aspen SUV. The city typically provides a vehicle for the mayor to use on official business.
A spokesman for Suttle said the new mayor wants to tout energy efficiency.
“We’re trying to increase awareness of the use of other forms of technology and different ways of at looking at things,” said spokesman Ron Gerard.
He said the lease, through GMAC, cost more because the nation’s lending collapse last year made leases more difficult to get. The city also is paying more to be able to get out of the lease quickly, if needed, Gerard said.
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Suttle decided to lease because that is how the city traditionally has handled mayor’s vehicles, his office said.
When asked why Suttle didn’t choose a less-expensive vehicle — even a non-hybrid — Gerard said Suttle had campaigned on increasing the use of alternative energy and driving a hybrid fit that message.
Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.I'M GETTING THE FEELING, too, that there's an old, simple and reliable bicycle in my future.
That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.
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Oil recently hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel, more than double its early 2007 price of about $50 a barrel. It closed Friday at $118.52.
The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.
Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.
While $7-$10 a gallon would be ground-breaking in America, these prices would not be trendsetting internationally. For example, European drivers are already shelling out $9 a gallon (which includes a $2-a-gallon tax).
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Early last year, with a barrel of oil trading in the low $50s and gasoline nationally selling in a range of $2.30 to $2.50 a gallon, Mr. Gaines — in an impressive display of crystal ball gazing — accurately predicted oil was $100-bound and that gasoline would follow suit by reaching $4 a gallon.
His latest prediction of $200 oil is open to question, since it would undoubtedly create considerable global economic distress. Further, just about every energy expert I talk to cautions me to expect a sizable pullback in oil prices, maybe to between $50 and $70 a barrel, especially if there's a global economic slowdown.
While Mr. Gaines thinks there could be a temporary decline in the oil price, he's convinced an overall uptrend is unstoppable. In fact, he thinks his $200 forecast could be conservative, and that perhaps $250 could be reached. His reasoning: a combination of shrinking supply and increasing demand, especially from China, India, and America.