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Tehachapi City coffers awash with money!

At last Monday’s City Council meeting a concerned citizen stated that the City Attorney, Thomas Schroeter, who has a 2,000 sq. foot office (bigger than my house) in Bakersfield, is also retained by certain other (not named) cities as their City Attorney as well. He is paid an hourly rate which he has recently lowered by $20.00 per hour in order to receive a full retirement package from the City of Tehachapi. The exact amount of this retirement package was not stated, but it would be nice to know.

According to Mr. Schroeter, when asked, the city’s retirement act was amended in 1993 to allow City Attorneys to receive this benefit if the City was willing!  Evidently they were. Even though he is not a City employee, if Mr. Schroeter is involved in an injury accident or has any disabling event while conducting City business, he may be entitled to a disability retirement. When he dies, his wife will continue to receive 50% of his benefits. Should he have a non-job related heart attack or otherwise be disabled he will be eligible for a lesser non job related retirement. Not bad. I wish I had such a deal.

The citizen then posed the question of why our City should take on the burden of providing retirement benefits to a very successful Bakersfield attorney who is not even a City employee and why did the City Council think this was such a great idea for the best interests of the citizens of Tehachapi? The Council is mulling this over.

But then, if the City can willy-nilly give away a $5,000.00 grant, at the request of Phil Wyman, for someone to teach an Indian basket weaving class (and then charge the students $240.00 each for the course) and no one even steps forward to take this class, what happens to that money?

Apparently, the City of Tehachapi has so much money they can freely spend it like John Edwards in a beauty shop!

Jim Richards