Vallejo City Council rejects side letter agreement with police union

VALLEJO – Despite a warning from staff that the city of Vallejo could face an unfair labor practices charge from the Vallejo Police Officers Association, the Vallejo City Council rejected a side letter agreement with the union over the calculation of incentive pay as part of an employee’s pension.

Councilmembers Peter Bregenzer, Mina Loera-Diaz, Cristina Arriola, and Charles Palmares all voted against approving the side agreement with the union, despite the council approving a tentative agreement in September 2019 which established a master officer program as an incentive to retain officers.

Through the tentative agreement, the city agreed to communicate with the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) about including the extra pay as part of the police officers’ pensions. After more than three years, the city was given that authorization from CalPERS, a state agency which manages pension and health benefits for California’s public employees and retirees, to include the special pay.

City hall sought the administrative approval last month but a majority of the council requested that staff communicate with CalPERS and get more information. City staff returned Tuesday night with the same information, presenting it with no substantive changes from January’s presentation.

But many of the council members had concerns with approving the side letter while the city is currently negotiating a new contract with the police union.

Loera-Diaz said it was “very inappropriate to vote on something like this right now.”

“If we waited 3 ½ years, we can wait a couple more months to get this resolved with the contract,” she added.

Arriola said she didn’t like the position she was in with the former council voting to approve the tentative agreement with the police union.

“I do not like being in this position, at all, for something that was done prior to us and then have CalPERS come at this final hour to force us into this,” Arriola said.

The master officer program provides either a 5% or 10% pay increase based on officer longevity and participation with special qualifying specialties within the department.

To be eligible for the 5% pay increase, officers must have 10 years of service as a peace officer, at least three years with Vallejo police, and have three years of serving in two qualifying specialties, including investigations, SWAT, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) instructors, bomb squad, training officers, internal affairs investigators, school resource officers, canine officers, and bicycle patrol, among others.

A 10% pay increase requires 15 years of service as a peace officer, at least three years with Vallejo police, and serving three years in two qualifying specialties.

Assistant City Manager Terrance Davis warned the council that the city was engaging in regressive bargaining by rejecting terms that a previous city council already approved.

“You can’t send me back to the [bargaining] table now to re-negotiate something that you agreed to, that would be regressive and not a good thing to do,” Davis told the council.

Davis said about 35 sworn officers receive the master officer pay. He said rejection of the side agreement would impact those who were in the program and retired since the extra pay wouldn’t be calculated in their pensions.

Both Mayor Robert McConnell and Councilmember Diosdado "J.R." Matulac, who voted in favor of the side agreement, said they were worried about the consequences of not approving it.

Matulac said it appeared the city would be violating contract law if the council rejected the side agreement.

“So as much as we may not like this, I don’t see where we have an out,” he said.

McConnell agreed, calling the rejection a “hazardous breach of contract.”

“I find myself in a hole, in a corner, really, against my will where I feel that I have to approve this request,” the mayor said.

McConnell advocated for some of the negotiations between the city and police union to be done in public.

The VPOA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the city council’s decision to reject the side agreement.

Vice Mayor Rozzana Verder-Aliga was absent from the meeting.

Some of the city council discussion about the VPOA side letter strayed into the status of 45 different reform recommendations the Vallejo Police Department is expected to complete before June.

The city ordered an assessment of the beleaguered police department several years ago with the third-party OIR Group releasing its findings of the police department in May 2020. Last November, city officials confirmed that only two of the recommendations were completed with the deadline looming.

Interim Police Chief Jason Ta said that a police captain and three other staff members are working full time on getting the recommendations completed by the May 31 deadline.

“Initially, when we started on the completion of the recommendations, we started chronologically, what we found out through the course of doing the work, all the recommendations had to be done at the same time,” Ta told the council.

Ta became interim chief in early November following the resignation of Police Chief Shawny Williams.

The council and staff also touched on the status of an investigation into the destruction of audio and video records in five police shooting investigations, which was first revealed by the Vallejo Sun last December.

There was a renewed call for answers by members of the public. McConnell said that the council is looking into holding a closed session meeting about the destruction of records.

Following McConnell’s comments, City Attorney Veronica Nebb reminded the city council that an investigation was already underway.

“I just wanted to state for the record that when this item first came up, came to our attention, we had requested that an independent investigation be done, and that is already underway,” Nebb said, prompting McConnell to add, “indeed it is.”

Assistant City Attorney Katelyn Knight previously claimed that the records were “inadvertently” destroyed in early 2021 before their destruction was allowed under city policy.

Evidence destruction logs released by the city indicate that the evidence was destroyed on Jan. 11, Jan. 13 and Jan. 20, 2021, and each item indicates that the city attorney’s office approved their disposal.