Yonkers NY, A City Of Lessons

[From article]
Yonkers’ budget is an astounding $1 billion a year, for a city of barely 200,000. And 80%-85% of that budget is taken up by salaries and benefits.
In large measure, the roots of Yonkers’ predicament lie in its knack for signing strikingly generous union contracts.
Under the terms of their current contract, which Mayor Mike Spano describes as “the most generous contract of any fire department in America,” the starting salary of a Yonkers’ firefighter is $71,000 — $20,000 higher than that of a New York City firefighter.
[. . .]
The average salary for a Yonkers public-school teacher is more than $100,000. Under the terms of their most recent contract, which expired in June 2011, any teacher with a master’s degree and 15 years of experience earns a salary of $113,674.
[. . .]
in 2006, sold the library building to balance the school district’s budget.
[. . .]
Yonkers had been placed under a court order to build public housing in certain white middle-class neighborhoods. When the city council voted to defy this order, Judge Leonard Sand retaliated with a fine that began at $100 and doubled every day, a rate that threatened literally to bankrupt the city within weeks. As Lisa Belkin’s book “Show Me a Hero” dramatically recounts, the control board took over city government until the city council relented and voted to allow the housing.
[. . .]
Teachers, firefighters and police officers spent decades getting lucrative promises out of cities across the nation. Now that the bills are coming due, will the unions kill the golden geese?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/nation_gone_yonkers_I6mmkJCdYobztjMedDKhUL/0

A nation gone Yonkers
With a $1 billion budget and out-of-control union costs, the city is hurtling toward bankruptcy. The scary part? Towns across America face the exact same disaster
By STEPHEN EIDE
New York Post
Last Updated: 11:12 PM, September 15, 2012
Posted: 11:07 PM, September 15, 2012