With only a week before a $500,000 concessions agreement with
the fire union was to expire, the City Council was set to possibly
review a new concessions proposal from the fire union Thursday
night.
With only a week before a $500,000 concessions agreement with the fire union was to expire, the City Council was set to possibly review a new concessions proposal from the fire union Thursday night. The council has said it will demote eight fire administrators if a new agreement is not reached, and earlier this month council members directed staff to take a closer look at contracting out fire services.
Gilroy’s City Council met in closed session Thursday evening to discuss a potential proposal from the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 2805, which represents Gilroy firefighters, and the Gilroy Police Officers Association. Local 2805 was set to vote on city-proposed concessions Wednesday, Local 2805 Secretary and Treasurer Jim Buessing said. Buessing wrote in an e-mail Thursday afternoon that he could speak further on the matter after the council’s closed session that evening.
The discussions come a week before a year-long contract concessions agreement between the fire union and the city, totaling about $500,000, expires. The council announced in March that if no concessions agreement is reached, they will eliminate the use of the Sunrise Fire Station in northwest Gilroy at most times, leading to the demotion of three fire captains and five fire engineers to firefighters.
Earlier this month, the council directed staff to look at the idea of contracting services with other agencies, such as CalFire or the Santa Clara County Fire Department.
“To me, this is not a negotiating tactic,” Councilman Perry Woodward said this week. “It’s not a way to bring the union to heel on some short-term issue. This is about making the current retirement system work.”
Exploring options
At the council’s June 7 meeting, Woodward requested city staff provide the council with information about contracting out fire services with CalFire. Councilman Bob Dillon wondered if the council also should look at contracting with the Santa Clara County Fire Department, and Woodward agreed. With a unanimous thumbs-up vote, the council directed city staff to place the matter on a future council meeting agenda.
City Administrator Tom Haglund said this week that city staff hopes to have a report about considerations needed to contract out fire services by the council’s July 19 meeting. The report will include information about what would be required to make such a switch, Haglund said. Specifically, it would cover legal matters, such as issues related to Local 2805, as well as information about a “level of service” agreement and the timeline for making a switch. The report will not include bids, as the city has not outlined a scope of services that it desires, Haglund said.
“This is not going to be geared toward making an instant decision,” Haglund said.
Woodward expressed concern this week that retirement plans for city employees are not sustainable. Like most other council members, he is pushing for a two-tiered retirement system in which new employees would receive a different set of benefits from current employees.
The fire department would be a good place to start, he said.
“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Woodward said. “The fact of the matter is the firefighters have been the most aggressive in the way that they’ve negotiated with the city in the past 15 years.”
Woodward and some council members have criticized the fire department in the past for its use of binding arbitration, a system in which a third-party arbiter chooses between the final offers of the city and union if either party decides labor negotiations are at an impasse. Police and fire unions have said it is their prime bargaining chip, as public safety workers are not allowed to strike.
Buessing would not comment on the council’s desire to look further into contracting out fire services.
“We don’t know what the terms or the costs would be,” he said.
Steven Woodill, Cal Fire’s unit chief for Santa Clara County and fire chief of the South Santa Clara County Fire District, said the agency has contracts with cities throughout the state, including in several cities in Riverside County.
Although CalFire has a contract with the South Santa Clara County Fire District, which oversees fire protection in the South County’s unincorporated areas, it does not have any contracts with any of its cities, he said. None of the cities in Santa Clara County have formally approached CalFire, he said, although Woodill said he occasionally receives informal requests for information.
Before the agency could provide a bid, CalFire and city officials would need to sit down for formal discussions and CalFire would need a request for proposal, he said.
“It’s very hard to quantify cost,” he said. “You have to be very specific about the level of service that a given entity wants.”
Meanwhile, Santa Clara County Fire Department has contracts with eight cities, including the City of Morgan Hill.
Like CalFire, the Santa Clara County Fire Department has no interest in seeking contracts with cities that have not approached them, Assistant Chief Steve Staump said.
“We are not imperialistic to go in some place where we have not been invited,” he said.
A tense backdrop
Recent negotiations between the city and fire union have been tense. The fire union made a one-year concession with the city last year for this current fiscal year that included about $500,000 in savings to the city, and the city has asked Local 2805 to extend those concessions. If they are not extended, Local 2805 will receive an 8.44-percent increase in compensation starting July 1, plus an additional 1.5-percent increase in 2011, city officials have said.
Although council members said they cannot comment on specifics of the negotiations, Woodward expressed frustration with the process.
“I think that (firefighters) are having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that structural change is upon them,” he said. “This is a new era of public employment.”
Buessing would not comment on negotiations Tuesday, although he said there have been several meetings between the city and the union.
Councilman Bob Dillon expressed optimism that deals would be worked out with both Local 2805 and the Police Officers Association, although he was not sure whether they would meet the Wednesday deadline.
“My feeling on it is I think we’re going to come to a reasonable conclusion,” Dillon said.
