Unions Prepare for Negotiations as City Ponders How to Cut $4 Million in Spending

Negotiations with the Petaluma’s three public employee unions are about to start, but expectations vary depending on whom you talk to. 

Paul Gilman, president of the Peace Officers Association of Petaluma, which represents about 80 employees, including 58 police officers, said he was not very optimistic about the upcoming discussions.

“To think that we are going to be able to go in and have fruitful negotiations like we did six years ago is a pipe dream,” Gilman said. “It’s not going to happen.”

But Martin Learn, president of Firefighters Local 1415, which represents about 40 Petaluma firefighters, said he was optimistic that some kind of deal could still be reached.

“We have some things we think we can offer; we have some really good ideas and we haven’t been told ‘no’ yet,” Learn said. “We’re just waiting to sit down at the table and work through our options.”

The city council recently agreed to make $4 million in cuts by next fiscal year, which starts in less than three months. These could come from laying off about 30 city employees, increasing employee contributions to health care premiums, continuing furloughs or some combination of the above.

The unions have been working to figure out how to save as many jobs as possible and some have met with various city representatives for preliminary discussions.

"We're trying to look at different formulas, at what we can do," Gilman said.

Reducing spending will be virtually impossible without some sort of reductions in police and fire, which together make up some 75 percent of the city’s total payroll expenditures.

Critics have said public safety employees have been too generously compensated throughout the years and it's time to make drastic cuts.

"I know laying off people is not an easy decision, but it's the right thing to do," Bryant Moynihan, a former city councilman and member of Sonoma County Taxpayers Association, a group that advocates responsible government.

Starting in 2005, fire personnel received salary increases averaging about 4 percent a year, four years in a row. Police officers also received an increase to their pension plan, from 2 percent at 55 years of age to 3 percent at 50 (meaning they would accrue 3 percent of their top salary for each year worked and be eligible to start receiving it when they turned 50.)

But police and fire union leaders both defended the increases as a way of making pay comprable to that of other agencies.

"Our guys are some of the lowest paid in the area and those raises were meant to bring them up," said Fire Chief Larry Anderson.

And light of dwindling revenues, both departments did scale back. The police department eliminated 14 positions starting 2008, getting rid of school resource officers and closing the anti-gang and drug units. The fire department eliminated seven positions in the same time frame, in an attempt to tighten the belt, Anderson said.

City officials estimate that the budget deficit is at $2.3 million next fiscal year, although Moynihan believes it's much higher because the city has continuously used monies from enterprise funds--such as for wastewater, the airport and community development--to prop up the general fund.

“The city should have laid off people five years ago,” he said. “But they didn’t and since then they have been digging themselves into a bigger and bigger hole.”

The unions, meanwhile, blame the city council for not doing enough to generate revenue, by having high building impact fees that discourage developers from coming to Petaluma and having a complicated approval process for new projects. Read Gilman op-ed in Wednesday’s Press Democrat.

“If there is anger among city employees, it’s because we feel that the city council has done nothing to generate revenue for the city,” Learner said. “The city dragged their feet so long on Target and now the economy has turned to where target is having second thoughts on whether that project is even viable.”

Deborah Padovan, president of AFSCME, which represents 111 public works, clerical and other City Hall employees, declined comment citing upcoming negotiations.