If you run a “present value” annuity calculation on the $175,000 pension for Mike Blair, retiring Roseville police chief (Journal, Aug. 20), using 3 percent return and 35 years term, you require a starting capital of $3.75 million.

However, to create that sum over the employment of Mr. Blair using 3 percent return and 24 years service, you need a set-aside of $220,000 per year over and above his salary.

This is almost as much as his $250,000 final salary and clearly far more than whatever he started his career at (and this without the other costs of his benefits, bonuses, allowances and healthcare).

There is nowhere in the private sector (except for the lucky few in successful software startups, or Wall Street raptors) where benefits are of the same order of magnitude.

I cannot imagine the job is worth $470,000 a year in return to the citizens of Roseville. Even if it is, and since this must be only the tip of the pension iceberg for local city and county employees, the value of these packages should be declared as an annual equivalent along with their salaries.

We who work in the private sector and whose earnings and savings will go to prop up these bloated pensions deserve to see the true cost of this lopsided system of rewards and thus have an opportunity to vote out the city and county officials who have allowed it to happen.

John Sisson, Newcastle