San Gabriel city officials hosted a community conversation event at the Church of Our Saviour on Thursday, Apr. 19 to encourage dialogue between members of the public and their elected leaders.
Hosted by Mayor Kevin Sawkins, Council Member Juli Costanzo, and School Board Members Denise Menchaca and Philip Hu, nearly 60 residents turned out to ask questions about their neighborhood, schools and local government.
However, after talking up such news as fundraisers and San Gabriel’s centennial celebration, the community conversation shifted dramatically toward staffing and retirement issues for members of the San Gabriel Police Department.
Police Management Group Vice President Sgt. Jeff Whitney said that he saw recruitment as a problem because the city was currently down four police officers, soon to be five, and that four or five more officers were expected to retire at the end of the year. “It takes time to recruit,” Whitney said. “You’re saving $118,000 per officer; however, my problem is that you’re stripping us down to below bare minimum (waiting) to get these positions filled.”
Whitney also criticized the city’s pension reform, where the city is proposing a second tier plan that lowers new hires to 2 percent of their top salary for every year worked with retirement eligibility at age 50. Whitney asked, “How are you going to get people to come here and work for this agency at those low rates when everyone else is at 3 at 50 or 3 at 55?”
Sawkins explained that the vacant positions do not affect the other officers out on the street as far as missing any officers on any particular shift. In fact, he said that the money the city is saving from those vacancies is going toward many officers working overtime. “So that’s really where that money is going,” he said. “Rather than spend it for the new hires, it’s going to pay overtime. It may not be dollar for dollar, but it’s pretty close.”
“You’re paying time and a half,” Whitney shot back. “Where’s the logic in that?”
“The logic is that if we were to hire those officers right now at the current pension rates, (keeping in mind that) right now we’re trying to go through pension reform, … we would not be able to afford it,” said Sawkins.
Whitney told the mayor that working so much overtime leads to burn out and falling below the minimum performance standards. “You talk about somebody who makes $130,000 in overtime; that’s a lot of overtime,” Whitney said. “When a guy makes $80,000 as a regular police officer, how long are you going to drive us into the ground doing that? That’s insane.”
Sawkins replied that it’s a temporary arrangement and that part of the delay in filling vacancies is that the city has been working on the second tier pension reform. “It doesn’t make sense to bring in new hires into the first tier when we are implementing a second tier of retirement,” he said. “It’s a financial issue, and it’s a balancing act.”
Whitney then claimed the city was potentially putting lives at stake because of the delay in implementing the second tier. “You’re talking about saving money. I get it,” Whitney said. “But not at the stake of these folks out here.”
Acknowledging the disagreement, Sawkins attempted to wrap up the argument by saying that the city takes its law enforcement personnel seriously. The city spends 60 percent of its general fund on public safety, by far the largest expense the city has, according to Sawkins.
“(This is) a city of 4.2-square miles, and as far as line officers (there are) 42 officer positions,” he said. “So I think we have a pretty good sized force for a city our size that is considered a fairly safe city.”
The debate stemmed from recently failed negotiations between the city and its employee labor unions. Adding tension to the deadlocked negotiations is the San Gabriel Police Officer’s Association’s lawsuit filed against members of the City Council on Mar. 8, alleging that city officials illegally spent $5.7 million in employee retirement funds. Denying the allegations, the city filed a response to the police association’s lawsuit, requesting a trial by jury and denying the allegations.
The San Gabriel Police and San Gabriel Firefighters Associations held their own community forum on Wednesday to inform residents and business owners of issues facing the City of San Gabriel from their own perspective. For more information on the dialogue being generated by the SGPOA, please visit their website at www.sangabrielpoa.com.
For more information on San Gabriel’s Centennial Celebration, visit the city’s official website at www.sangabrielcity.com.
