Alameda City Council Approves New Contract with Firefighters

After a lengthy community comment period Tuesday night, Alameda’s city council voted 4-1  to approve a new contract with the city's firefighters.

While the contract makes some modifications in the long term structure of benefits and pension funding — notably increasing employee pension contributions and doing away with spousal health insurance in retirement for new hires — it was not supported by the majority of speakers at the meeting, many of whom called for pay cuts and benefit reductions. 

City staff estimate the increase in employee contributions to pension plans will save the city $292,500 over the life of the contract.

“When I look at the firefighters contract, I think it's real sad.” said Gretchen Lipow, a retired teacher, and a member of the Alameda Citizens Task Force, which pushed for delaying the contract vote to make time for community review. 

Lipow made a connection between the cost of compensation for the city's firefighters and the community members at the meeting who were advocating for other city services, like the Animal Shelter, which is threatened with closure or , and the library which is continuing to .

For their part, the city's firefighter union already voted in May to approve the contract, which had initially been slated to come before city council during the council's first meeting in June, but was postponed after the off Crown Beach on Memorial Day.

Mayor Marie Gilmore, vice mayor Rob Bonta and councilmembers Lena Tam and Beverly Johnson voted to approve the agreement. “It makes progress and it gets the ship turned the right direction," Bonta said. "It’s not an end point but it’s a very good starting point."

Still, the majority of public comment disagreed with the vice mayor's assessment.

"Seventy percent of our budget is tied up with guys making too much goddamn money,” said the city's auditor Kevin Kearney, who has been an outspoken advocate of fiscal sustainability, to an outburst of applause from the audience.

In her comments to council, Nancy Hird, also of the Alameda Citizens Task Force, wondered why the city's firefighters were not taking the 5 percent salary cut that city managers recently took, and compared the starting pay of doctors with years of medical training  to the salaries of a starting firefighters, a position which requires less schooling.

Alameda's new city manager John Russo noted that, with approval of the contract last night, the city's firefighters will have gone without a raise for six years by the end of the contract in 2013.

Russo said that other Bay Area fire departments have accepted pay cuts on the heels of pay raises. That's not the case in Alameda, he said, where firefighters haven't received a raise in recent years.

Hird also talked about how firefighters use time in the firehouses while waiting for calls. “At least they could be updating emergency response procedures during that time,” she said, a reference Zack's death, and the , that forbid firefighters from entering the water for a rescue.

Another speaker questioned why the city has fire engines responding to medical calls, and cited a figure that 80 percent of all fire department calls are medical, which require an ambulance and trained paramedics, but not firefighting equipment.

Lipow noted the concessions made by teachers in Alameda last year – five instructional days and three training days – amounting to eight unpaid days for the year, saying they played an important part in keeping the district solvent, and wondered why firefighters could not do the same for the city.

“Alameda teachers played a role in trying to keep the school district afloat,” said Lipow, suggesting that Alameda firefighters should do the same.

The city is facing across-the-board cuts; firefighter salaries and benefits make up about a third of the city's budget.

While many speakers urged council to wait on voting on the contract so there could be more citizen input, Russo explained that the laws and requirements governing contract negotiations are complex and constraining, emphasizing that at this point in the negotiations the discussions could not simply be reopened.

"California law is extremely rigid about what in a contract negotiation can be public and what can be private," he said, also noting also that there are strict limitations on when topics can be introduced and discussed in negotiations. 

Russo acknowledged the public's frustration with the process and said he would build opportunities for public commentary into the beginning of future contract negotiations and also hold a community training session in the fall about the intricacies of the rules and laws governing labor negotiations in California.

Kevin Kennedy, Alameda’s treasurer, noted some positives in the contract. “We are getting a little more PERS contribution, so that is a  good thing, and for new hires we’ve changed the retiree medical," he said. 

 But, said Kennedy, the contract fails to address the unfunded liability — the money the city will need in the future — to cover the cost of health care benefits for employees after they retire. 

“This contract does nothing to address our unfunded liability,” Kennedy said. "It does not change retiree health benefits for current employees."

Kennedy also said that because the budget for firefighters is such a large percentage of the city's overall budget that, in order to preserve other city services, cuts will need to be made to elsewhere.

"We’re doing 7 million in budget cuts this year, and the Fire Department is one third of our budget, so it should be about two and quarter million in cuts," he said, saying that the new contract will yield only about $100,000 in savings for the city.

Kennedy also wondered about the impact on the budget if the city's police officers have a new contract with similiar provisions. "We will be effectively locked in on 70 percent of our budget," he said.

Many speakers suggested that without cutting pay and benefits, employees will need to be cut. The police department now has 88 officers — down from a high of 111. 

City's auditor Kearney, who made regional headlines with his plea for fiscal caution earlier this year, said the contract does not do nearly enough to contain costs.

“If the firefighters don’t take a 10 percent cut now it’s not going to matter,” Kearney said.

‘You're the parents  in charge of the cookie jar," he said to council, noting that he resented personal attacks in the debate that he said have painted him as an anti-union activist. 

“This is not rocket science it’s math, “ he said, saying if anyone came up with a math-based solution that would make budget numbers add up to preserve city services he would be delighted.

"I would love you to say, 'Your math is wrong Kearney,'" he said. 

In voting to support the contract Mayor Gilmore emphasized the importance of working with employee groups to develop solutions together for the city's budget.

"We want to work with our employees in partnership," she said. "We have many more steps we need to take together."

"The hole we're in has been 20 years in the making," Russo said. "We will not get out of it in 20 days."

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