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The Pleasanton City Council has signed off on compensation increases and adjustments to benefits for city management employees and police officers.
The 4-0 approvals came with little fanfare and no discussion Tuesday night — as part of the council’s 11-item consent calendar, a collection of items deemed routine and voted upon all at once at the start of the meeting. Councilman Arne Olson was absent.
Council members had voiced strong support for the new contract with the Pleasanton Police Officers Association (PPOA) during their initial review of the proposal two weeks ago.
The deal with the union calls for all 60 Pleasanton police officers and 13 sergeants to receive a 3.5% raise effective upon contract adoption and then 3% raises in June 2018 and June 2019.
That compares to the new raises endorsed for 74 city management and confidential employees, a pay bump that works out to a 3% increase to the “control points” (or midpoint for the salary ranges) for those positions.
The resolution for management employees also includes a 1% increase, or up to $434,107, going into the pool of money available for performance-based pay increases for those employees. The salary structure for these positions is a range system — with a minimum and maximum possible salary — rather than a step system
It also calls for doubling the minimum employee contribution toward medical premiums for employees with family coverage to $50 per month effective July 2018. There would also be an additional city contribution of 0.5% of base wages into a deferred compensation plan for a total city contribution of 1.5%, effective Jan. 13.
The financial impact on the city for all changes is estimated at $488,000 over the next 12 months, with $388,800 felt during the 2017-18 fiscal year
The resolution applies to directors, managers and other top senior employees in each city department, including police management — all except the city manager and city attorney, who have separate contracts. It also applies to confidential employees, seven job classifications who are involved in the bargaining process and cannot be represented by a union.
As for the new memorandum of understanding with the PPOA, in addition to the salary increases the new three-year contract includes a one-time stipend of $2,000 per police officer and sergeant in recognition of each of them completing crisis intervention training.
As for pensions, all PPOA members already in the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) program, referred to as “classic members,” will see their employee contribution increase 1.5% (to 12% overall) effective June 2, 2018. New members’ contributions will remain at 11.5%.
The contract would also double the minimum employee contribution toward medical premiums for officers with family coverage to $50 per month effective January 2019.
Among the other provisions, the deal stipulates that a joint committee of PPOA and police management will be created to discuss diversity, personal appearance, grooming standards and incentivizing special assignments, with the recommendations from this group — non-binding — to be presented to negotiating teams during the next round of bargaining talks.
In all, the new police union contract is estimated to cost $1.9 million through fiscal year 2019-20, of which $432,000 will be incurred this year, according to city staff.
