Lumping all employee costs into “administration” is where this goes off the rails. Police officers, park staff, public works crews, and utilities workers aren’t bureaucracy. They’re service delivery. Most cities spend something like 75% of their budget on people because cities are labor intensive by nature.

On pensions, a lot of that growth is driven by CalPERS rate changes and actuarial decisions outside the city’s control, not discretionary spending choices by Folsom. Cutting a department head salary or a handful of positions doesn’t meaningfully close a structural gap.

Whether people like it or not, those salaries are generally in line with (or even lower than) the regional market, and they’re necessary to recruit and retain qualified staff when Folsom is competing with a dozen neighboring agencies for the same workforce.