Santa Rosa police, fire concessions could save $5 million
City Council will consider proposed wage freezes at Tuesday meeting
Published: Monday, May 4, 2009 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, May 3, 2009 at 1:52 p.m.
Nearly 300 Santa Rosa police and fire department employees are giving up all or part of their projected pay raises over the next two years — moves expected to save the city more than $5 million and 30 jobs.
Contracts calling for the wage concessions with unions representing the city’s police officers, police and fire management and the police department’s civilian workers will come before the City Council for approval Tuesday.
If ratified, the contracts will save the city $5 million in raises it expected to pay out over the next two years, Human Resources Director Fran Elm said.
Those raises are based on projections of what the city would have to pay under its labor agreements, which require it to pay salaries comparable to those in mostly similar-sized Bay Area cities, Finance Director David Heath said.
In February, the city was bracing for a $23 million budget deficit next year that would require a combination of deep service cuts, revenue increases, layoffs and labor concessions.
Following months of budget cutting, the city’s financial experts now predict the city will be able to balance its budget by July 1, the start of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
Elm, however, said that projection is based on wage freezes or other cost-saving concessions by all the city’s dozen bargaining units.
The concessions offered by the three bargaining units, pending council ratification, should speed that process along, Elm said.
“With police and fire taking the lead on giving concessions, it sends a big message to the other units who have felt that police and fire got everything in past negotiations with the city while they got the leftovers,” she said.
Mayor Susan Gorin said most of the bargaining talks “are around trade-offs between layoffs and savings.” The contracts before the council are welcome news for a city that could continue to face tough economic challenges in 2010 as well, she said.
“Even though it was announced that it looks pretty good for next year, we continue to have issues with declines in our sales tax and everything else,” Gorin said.
Under the proposals before the council Tuesday, the police department’s officers and managers have agreed to forgo a combined 9.8 percent pay raise over the next two years, Elm said. That would save $3.8 million from what the city had expected to pay, she said.
That money will be used to reinstate 25 police officers and one sergeant’s position that had been slated for elimination, Elm said.
Police officer Ken Johnson, president of the Santa Rosa Police Officers Association, said union members agreed to freeze their pay for two reasons.
“We want Santa Rosa to be a place where people are comfortable and feel safe. A lot of us live here too,” he said. “And we also didn’t want to lose 25 officers.”
Fire department managers will receive a 4.5 percent pay raise July 1 and will take only a 3.5 percent increase on July 1, 2010, less than the 8 percent the city figured it would have to give them, Elm said.
Those same employees, however, will turn around and return the 4.5 percent pay increase due this July 1 to pay a greater share of their health benefits, Elm said.
“They will net zero dollars because they will give it back to us,” she said.
The turn-back allows those fire department managers to receive a higher retirement benefit because those benefits are based on the highest salary year.
“There’s a lot of horse-trading going on,” Heath said, commenting on the various methods the city is using to get a certain percentage of savings from each of the bargaining units.
The third contract, involving about 60 civilian police department employees, will give them a 1.5 percent raise retroactive to last July 1 and another 2 percent in January 2010, Elm said.
That is 7 percent below what the city calculated it would have to pay the union of dispatchers, evidence and police technicians through June 2011, resulting in a projected savings of $900,000.
Part of that savings will be used to save the jobs of three field and evidence technicians and one police technician slated for elimination as of July 1, Elm said.
The ratification of the three contracts follows in the footsteps of previous agreements by the city’s top executives to give up 4 percent pay raises last year and this coming year, which will save the city $200,000 annually.
The city’s firefighters also deferred a 4.5 percent pay raise over the past year that saved the city $550,000.
That raise is scheduled to kick-in this July 1, but Elm said she continues to negotiate with the firefighters union over its status.
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