As others have pointed out, it's likely the retirement portion is large but won't go to these particular employees when they retire. Instead, it's likely the ci

As others have pointed out, it's likely the retirement portion is large but won't go to these particular employees when they retire. Instead, it's likely the city pension fund is underfunded for current retirees so extra for every current employee is budgeted to go into the fund to make up for it. Budgeting rules may also require that they allocate enough for each employee in case they all have families of 4 or larger when in fact many will have only one or two people in their household. Even though the amount over the salary was called "mandated benefits," it likely also includes non-benefit costs like payroll taxes. Even so, budgeting over 100% for non-salary costs per-employee is hard for me to get my head around; a bad pension situation seems like the most plausible expanation (or the original reporting [0] was wrong, they didn't show their work). [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Breed-inspects-streets-for-cleanup-on-the-q-t-13172569.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Bree...