Rohnert Park council approves employee concessions

After six months of negotiations, Rohnert Park on Tuesday approved a new contract with three of its employee associations that will include wage and benefit concessions.

The agreements move the city a small step closer to balancing its $26.5 million budget, which was built partly on more than $1 million in savings the city hopes to achieve through pay and benefit cuts rather than layoffs.

The agreements approved Tuesday would save a combined $190,000, or roughly 15 percent of the $1.2 million in cuts the city is seeking. They covered 50 employees — ranging from office workers to department heads — represented by the Rohnert Park Employees Association and bargaining units representing top managers and other senior staff.

The council voted unanimously to approve two of the agreements, but split 3-2 on the vote to approve the agreement with top management.

Mayor Amie Breeze and Councilman Joseph Callinan voted against the agreement.

“Leadership comes from the top,” said Breeze. She and Callinan had called on the seven managers represented by the agreement to take a voluntary 25 percent pay cut.

That demand was “not realistic” or “appropriate,” Councilwoman Pam Stafford said. It failed to acknowledge that top managers “carry an extra burden,” and would drive quality employees from the city, she said.

Under the agreements approved, the 50 employees accepted 160 furlough hours, to be taken over the next 20 months, and agreed to roll back pension benefits, starting with new employees hired after July 2010.

The pension benefits would return to 2004 levels — when they allowed non-safety workers to retire at age 55 with pensions equal to 2 percent of their pay for each year worked.

That alone, said Councilman Jake MacKenzie — who in 2004 voted against increasing the pension benefits to their current levels — would “in the fullness of time … return us to a more sustainable future.”

But the employees covered by Tuesday’s agreements, about 30 of whom are office workers, represent the minority of the 140 workers with whom accords must be reached. Negotiations continue with the Service Employees’ International Union and the Public Safety Officers’ Association, as well as with the smaller Public Safety Managers’ Association.

Interim city manager Dan Schwarz said he couldn’t comment on those ongoing negotiations. Representatives of those unions did not return calls seeking comment.

The ranks of both the larger unions have already been hit. The city’s budget was balanced partly by eliminating 25 employees through layoffs and buyouts, mostly in police and fire services. The public safety department — which combines police and fire services — makes up the largest part of the city’s budget and also took the biggest hit in efforts to balance the budget.

Police and fire services make up $19.5 million of the city’s current budget and the department has been asked to make $3.5 million in cuts, partly through proposed wage concessions.

To date, the department has made $2.2 million in cuts, slashing its operations, training and overtime budgets, and laying off or buying out personnel including police/fire officers, community service officers and evidence technicians.

The city — battered by a sliding economy that has slashed its revenues from property and sales taxes and fees — has reacted by closing swimming pools, cutting its recreation budget, cutting administration staff by 16 people, combining departments to eliminate positions, and lopping $125,000 from its animal shelter budget.