Vallejo City Council approves agreement with police union regarding incentive pay

VALLEJO – The Vallejo City Council voted Tuesday to approve a side letter agreement with the Vallejo Police Officers’ Association (VPOA) allowing incentive pay to be applied to officers’ pension programs.

The approval of the agreement passed with councilmember Cristina Arriola opposed and councilmember Charles Palmares abstaining from the vote.

The current council had already voted down the side letter agreement in February. But Councilmember Peter Bregenzer requested another vote as an “olive branch” in labor contract negotiations with the VPOA.

The last contract with VPOA and the City of Vallejo expired on March 31, 2022.

The original side letter was approved in 2019 before the election of the current council and its new members. It established a master officer pay program which rewarded officers for the length of their service and participation in various qualifying specialties. The program is intended to improve officer retention and attract experienced officers from other departments.  

The master officer pay program is currently in place but at the time it was approved by the previous council there were questions about whether this pay could be included in the calculation of the state Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS.) But the approval from CalPERS was not completed until two years later and the vote fell on the current council and its newly elected members.

The council rejected finalizing the agreement because they felt uncomfortable approving a legacy decision from a previous council right in the middle of negotiations between the City and the VPOA on a new labor contract.

Mayor Robert McConnell, who was on the council at the time the Master Officer Pay Program was approved, expressed concern at the February meeting that voting down additional retirement benefits could expose the city to a lawsuit from the VPOA over regressive bargaining.

City Attorney Veronica Nebb said the council and the VPOA approved the agreement in 2019 and that action included the city seeking a CalPERS determination of eligibility.

“The [legal] question becomes whether or not, if a future council repudiates that action, is that action regressive bargaining,” said Nebb. “The answer to that question is yes. If we get into a situation of that issue being grieved, having already been decided in 2019, we are not going to win that argument.”

McConnell requested that, when the next labor contract comes up, the City council receive a primer on collective bargaining to avoid creating similar legacy decisions in the future.

“I don’t like this, It stinks to high heaven,” Arriola said. “And the fact that CalPERS, and on our end, did not figure this out until three years later… I feel like I am voting for a sloppy transition so I will vote the way I did last time.”