public safety
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Broad Brush, your weekly, two-sentence local news review. Here’s what happened on the Island this week.
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Highlights:
- The City Council will consider amended five-year contracts for public safety workers on April 29 which would go into effect in November if approved.
- The contracts establish a trust fund for retiree health benefits. The city would pay $7.5 million into the trust fund over 10 years; workers would pay between 2 percent and 4 percent of the top step of pay for their position into the fund over the next decade.
- The contracts also offer wage increases that would raise pay at least 9.3 percent and change pension payouts to reflect a safety retiree’s top salary, and not their top three years of pay.
New police and fire contracts designed to keep a lid on costs and buy the city some labor peace over the next five years were approved by the City Council on Tuesday night.
The council voted 3-1 to approve contracts with unions representing police officers, firefighters and their supervisors. The approval resolves a grievance filed by firefighters that could have cost Alameda more than $7 million through 2017 if the city lost a legal challenge.
Under terms of the contracts, Alameda’s public safety employees will pay slightly more than the maximum pension contribution required of public employees as part of state pension reform.
