Re “The making of the city’s budget crisis” (May 17): Interesting article in Sunday’s U-T about the making of the city’s budget crisis. However, it had no mention of the real cause of the morass — the increasing, and now total, control of the city by labor unions. The result is no outsourcing of city services, misleading passage of the trash fees and outrageous opposition to ending defined-benefit pensions for new hires, which are simply not sustainable. The labor unions’ mantra is spend, spend, spend, then tax, tax, tax, because their puppets on the City Council will always approve pay raises.
— Tim Malott, Carmel Valley