Politics & Government

Walnut Creek City Council Says Yes to Deal with Police Managers on Salary Freezes, Increases in Payments to Retirement, Health Benefits

Police managers will accept a salary freeze and begin paying into retirement system as a way to help city bridge its $20 million deficit

UPDATE: The Walnut Creek City Council Wednesday unanimously said yes to a two-year agreement that calls for a freeze on the salaries of police managers and asks sergeants, lieutenants and captains to increase their employee contributions into the CalPERS retirement system from 0 percent to 7 percent.

The city council, as expected, adopted a memorandum of understanding between the city and the Police Management Association, which represents 17 sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. 

Police managers' concessions is expected to save the city $586,000 over the next two years. The agreement comes after the city adopted a budget designed to bridge a $20 million deficit gap. 

Find out what's happening in Walnut Creekwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

City council members, at a special meeting Wednesday, praised police managers for willing to agree to these terms. 

"I'm pleased to support this," said Council member Kish Rajan. "This is a tremendous showing of leadership on the part of the police management association. The police have emblazoned on their patrol cars, "Working together to benefit our community." Their contribution to the financial health of the city is an example of them working together to benefit the community."

Find out what's happening in Walnut Creekwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Council member Gary Skrel calls this agreement "stable" and says it provides a building block for the foundation of the "structural change" the city needs to make in the future. 

In 2009, when the city faced a $5.6 million budget deficit, it negotiated substantial concessions from the five bargaining units representing city employees. 

The Police Management Association and the Walnut Creek Police Association both agreed to forgo salary increases to help the city balance its budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year. Those concessions helped save the city $850,000.

This new agreement does not affect police officers, whose contract is up in 2012, just the sergeants, lieutenants and captains. Under the memorandum of understanding, the bi-weekly salary ranges that will remain in effect are:

Captains: $4,544 to $6,251

Lieutenants: $3,961 to $5,438

Sergeant: $3,896 to $4,102

In addition, police managers will begin contributing 10 percent to Kaiser medical premium costs in 2010. Sergeants assigned to the specialized motors, investigations, and community policing units are eligible to receive the same overtime as members of the Walnut Creek Police Association. 

Hard economic times have led to some difficult choices. Back in 2008, before the economic downturn, the council agreed to increase salaries for police managers by 4.4 percent. In 2007, the Police Officers' Association five-year contract raised officers' salaries 5 percent, to a range of $70,637 to $85,821.

While this new reality means no pay increases, it is helping to keep officers in jobs. The Walnut Creek Police Department has not had layoffs, but there are fewer people working for the department. The department has frozen and not filled positions for three officers, one police services officer and one dispatcher. Other positions won't be filled under the 2010-12 budget: a civilian manager, a lieutenant, a police officer and a police assistant. 


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here