Council pays police, considers sales tax increase
The Redondo Beach City Council has a tentative agreement in place with its police officers union, ending a 16-month labor standoff between the two sides. To do so, the Council unanimously approved a plan to borrow funds from the City’s pension reserve fund. The move set off a series of budget discussions that will likely culminate in City Hall asking its residents to accept a sales tax increase.
“There was a lot of pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth, but we got it done,” said Redondo Beach Police Officers Association President Robert Carlborg.
According to Carlborg, the tentative agreement from the City includes a two percent base pay raise, effective when the agreement is finalized, as well as a $3,750 one-time payment for each officer. RBPOA is expected to vote to ratify the agreement next week.
They can’t relax for long: the agreement is set to expire on Dec. 31, meaning that the police officers will be back at the negotiating table almost immediately after it’s ratified.
“The reward for all of this is that we’re right back at it,” Carlborg said. “It’s not a perfect deal, not for either side. I believe we’ll be able to ratify it, but it’s not going to be unanimous.”
Redondo Beach’s rank and file police officers have been at odds with the City since April 2018, months before a memorandum of understanding between Police and the City expired the following July.
To get there, the Council had to approve a transfer of $119,982 from Redondo’s Public Employee Retirement System Reserve Fund, which carries a balance of approximately $5.5 million.
Redondo Beach, as Mayor Bill Brand often repeats, faces an ongoing structural budget deficit. Staff projected that the City’s pension liabilities will increase by about $2 million annually, meaning that Redondo needs to generate new revenue, cut existing services, or a combination of the two.
“We’re getting to the point where we have to make some hard choices,” said Councilman Christian Horvath.
Among those hard choices, the Council requested staff to return with an ordinance that would put a half-percent sales tax increase before voters as early as the March 2020 election. The increase would bring Redondo’s sales tax up to 10 percent from 9.5 percent. Staff estimates that increase would generate an additional $5.3 million annually for the City.
At Brand’s urging, Councilwoman Laura Emdee also moved that Redondo include a quarter-percent “hold,” based off of a recent El Segundo measure. The hold would raise the sales tax by an additional 0.25 percent, matching the states sales-tax cap — but only if a County-wide tax measure is approved for the ballot. Theoretically, the local tax would supersede the County measure.
“If we don’t keep it local, the County will come in and take it,” Emdee said.
The elephant in the room is Redondo’s other labor standoff, with the Redondo Beach Firefighters Association. Earlier this month, the Council voted against imposing the terms of a “last, best and final” offer on its firefighters, resigning the two sides back to negotiations. That came in the wake of the City Council voting, in a split-decision, to end a study examining the costs of switching from local to Los Angeles County Fire services.
“Yes, we’re using what was due to the firemen and another $125,000, because we didn’t get an agreement and we didn’t impose — and that’s because you killed the County quote,” Brand said to Council members Horvath, Emdee and John Gran.
“Now we’re saying to Fire, you get absolutely nothing…we’re not going to look at anything to look at how to do business differently. Instead, we’re going to give you absolutely nothing,” Councilman Nils Nehrenheim said angrily, accusing his colleagues of “stealing” from the firefighters to pay police.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s stealing from anyone,” Carlborg said after the meeting. “The Council makes decisions when it comes to contract negotiations; I understand they’re still in negotiations. What the status of that is, I don’t know. I do know the Fire Department does a fantastic job.”
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