City Staff and SACOP Make Headway on Police Pay Raise Negotiations

The City of San Angelo (COSA) and the San Angelo Coalition of Police (SACOP) made some ground in Wednesday’s Meet and Confer meeting, when after eight months of at times heated discussion the battle over a proposed police pay raise finally gave way to a point of negotiation.

Several proposals had been introduced in the meetings leading up to the one held April 2, without any real agreement made between the two parties. Following the proposition of an organization-wide raise discussed at the March 19 meeting from the City side and an SAPD-centered counter presented by SACOP at that same meeting, City staff returned to the meeting room in City Hall Wednesday with a negotiated proposal that will begin the bargaining between the two entities.

Initially, SACOP had requested to move their salaries to between 97-103 percent of the average salaries of their 13 benchmark cities. At the March 19 meeting, a revised proposal requested that officer salaries be raised incrementally over a three-year period, reaching 85 percent in the first year, 92.5 percent in the second, and 100 percent in the third. The proposal also included dropping some steps in the ranges of ranks from 13 to max pay down to 10.

The previous meeting left off with a question of budget capacity to fund raises for the SAPD and for all employees of the City, as well as a mention of the need for direction from City Council as to how high a priority pay raises for police and City employees are in general.

When City staff and SACOP entered the meeting room for an agenda item that simply read “continued discussion of pay scenarios”, anticipation was felt by all who wondered where the discussion might lead.

In brief and concise 10-minute presentation, Assistant City Manager and Chief Financial Officer Michael Dane introduced the City’s first real shot at bargaining by outlining modifications staff had made to SACOP’s previous proposal.

“We’ve got some small issues…that aren’t clear to us right now that we need to work out,” Dane began, mentioning the drop in steps SACOP had previously proposed. “In creating a plan like this it’s critical that we have some of those details worked out. This is just the first step.”

Dane later elaborated on the areas that need further clarification from SACOP’s previous proposal, then introduced the three main steps staff feel need to be taken in order to move further.  

“Three steps, we want to agree where we are now. That’s kind of a small issue, but it becomes the basis of our moving forward,” he said, then moved on to point two. “We want to establish the goal…I think together we want to establish a goal that we can approach Council for approval on, and then the third piece is pace. How quickly do we want to move from what we’ve established to the goal…”

City Manager Daniel Valenzuela was absent from the meeting Wednesday, however Dane advised he had been authorized to discuss points two and three in the meeting, namely defining the ultimate goal or percentage SACOP and the City could agree to meet, and in what time frame.

“The ultimate goal that I’ve been authorized to talk about is 95 percent,” he continued. “We think that 95 percent is a good starting point as the goal, or something that Council in the past has been willing to consider. Really that’s where that goal is going to need to have its ultimate approval (in Council).”

As for a time frame, the City proposed to stretch SACOP’s 3three-year proposal to four, and to discuss possibly adding a previously mentioned “Me Too” clause. The clause, Human Resources Director Lisa Marley explained, would allow the police to take advantage of raises that exceeded the negotiated rate if the City had a good year and was able to provide other employees with a larger percentage. Dane said it was not necessary to discuss that at this point, however should it be included, staff would like it to go both ways.

“Let’s say we have a negotiated contract and one year they were only supposed to get 5 percent, but then all the City employees get 10 percent, they wanted the 10 percent as well,” Marley said. “When Michael was talking about that today…he was saying that they wanted it to go both ways. If the police got a big increase and they could swing it with the City employees, that he wanted a “Me Too” clause that it was given to the city employees as well.”

Following Dane’s presentation, the members of SACOP went to caucus, and returned with a decision on the counter proposal.

SACOP President Kory Kennedy delivered the coalition’s response. “Our initial proposal was 93-103 in three years,” he said. “Just listening to this group (the SACOP team), who listens to the larger group (the officers of the SAPD), I think four years would be difficult, but attainable. I think we’re close on pace and I think that we’re close on goal. I think the biggest issue we have at this point is where are we now. That’s where we have to meet because we can’t to the ultimate goal and we can’t get to the pace unless we know where we’re starting from.”

The issue with the starting point is a familiar one. In SACOP’s first proposal, they requested raising salaries based on the starting and ending pay of officers. Each rank has 13 steps before promoting up a rank. A subsequent City proposal adjusted salaries based on the average of the midpoints of those ranges, however the issue SACOP presents with this is that their benchmarks top out in a shorter span of time.

At a previous meeting, Kennedy explained the issue in detail. “It (the midpoint raise) will move (the pay scale), but it doesn’t make us competitive because they’re getting there faster. If they’re midpoint is—and I’m using an arbitrary number because I don’t have it in front of me—three [years] and they top out at year six with $65,000, and I top out in eight (years) at $55,000, they’re getting more money faster and I’m getting less money slower.”

In order to define the ultimate goal and the pace, the entities will have to agree upon how to assess the PD’s current situation. Marley suggests that once the math is done, it might not matter which points are averaged, but says she has yet to experiment with the numbers and plans to do so before the next meeting.

“What really comes into play is the number of steps,” she said, “and what I want to do is go back to the 13 cities and average the number of steps.”

Having agreed on a starting point for negotiations, City staff and SACOP began making plans for how to move forward. It was decided that the two entities would elect members to form a smaller subcommittee, which would meet together over the next month to work out the finer details of a proposal that could later be voted upon.

The subcommittee will include members of the City negotiating staff and SACOP, as well as the City finance team, and will meet in private session on April 17 and 22. The next regular public meeting is scheduled for May 7 at 9 a.m. in City Hall. 

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