San Francisco’s Former City Employees Excited About Car Giveaways

July 8, 2007 | by Dan | No Comments

By Dan Wheeler

San Francisco- San Francisco’s former city employees are excited about their former employer’s newest plan to ensure the city leads the nation in lavish benefits for former employees.

The free car giveaway idea came out of budget discussions at City Hall. Analysis of the city’s health care benefit plan concluded that the city has an unfunded liability of $4,900,000,000, the largest of any city in California, including the vastly larger city of Los Angeles. (San Francisco promises to pay its former employees health care benefits for life if they worked at least 5 years for the city.)

Mayor Gavin Newsom and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said that “originally, we thought we’d pay down the debt by $500,000 a year. We figured we’ll take care of that problem in no time. Then, someone pointed out that with only 6% inflation in health care costs, the city’s liability is increasing by $24 million per month! Why even try? We figured its better to increase benefits and go down swinging. Luckily, we got a call from the city’s BMW dealership just then and we knew what we had to do.”

Twenty-four year old Jeff Wintries, sales trainee at the South Van Ness BMW dealership was excited about closing the city’s first monthly order for 690 specially-appointed 7-series cars. He bragged, “….it was brilliant, if I do say so myself. I read in the paper that Carlos Garcia, the new schools supe, was soft for custom BMWs and I figured the other bigwigs would be too. I told them they would get a ‘civil servant discount’ and I gave them a discount–off the price I just jacked up, moohoohahahahahahahahahahahha.”

We talked to the school superintendent, Mr. Garcia, who seemed peeved about the BMW giveaway. “I had to use my car allowance to get my car last month and there was barely enough to get the driver’s side and passenger’s side rose water warming basins. Now they’re just giving cars away to all former employees?! I could have used my allowance to buy my kids a car if I’d known. I gotta get a raise.”

Crooked Street Press tracked down Hewey Johnson, a former city permit inspector who now heads up Hewey Architects and More. “Yeah, a free car sounds like a good idea, but I’m going to need a deposit up front. Can’t never go wrong with a deposit.”