S. Tahoe discloses actual salary, benefit figures

By Kathryn Reed

South Lake Tahoe officials have provided Lake Tahoe News with exact dollar amounts for how salaries and benefits are broken down. This intervention was needed because the figures could not be ferreted out based on published documents provided by the city.

Total salaries for 2010-11 are $16,851,913; benefits total $9,849,239; making for a grand total of $26,701,152, according to the city.

There are 205.75 full-time employees in the city. The dollar figures account for the part time and seasonal employees as well.

Lake Tahoe News had come up with nearly $33 million for the total. This is because the budget says the personnel services encompass health, dental, vision and so on.

“We checked the calculation and the difference results because the consultant you had do the calculation included benefits budgeted in the Health Self Insurance and Workers Compensation funds,” South Lake Tahoe Finance Director Christine Vuletich wrote to Lake Tahoe News. “Then the actual expenses paid out for health insurance premiums and claims, and workers compensation premiums and claims are paid from these two internal service funds [Health Self Insurance and Workers Compensation]. So the consultant essentially counted these expenses twice.”

LTN admits to having counted them twice and apologizes to readers for first publishing inflated salary-benefit totals. But the exercise points to the convoluted budgeting and reporting processes the city continues to use which in turn makes it impossible for the public to know exactly where its tax dollars are being spent without continued dialog with city staff.

Budgets are not normally so complex.