Sherman R. Frederick
Novato Advance
Full-time Novato city employees will get up to a $5,000 bonus for doing the city’s business during the pandemic. That measure was approved unanimously at the City Council meeting on Feb. 8. The action kicked off a bigger discussion about whether the city’s police officers deserve more than everyone else and whether the city has a burgeoning crisis in retaining good police officers.
The Council will begin a discussion of those issues at its meeting on Feb. 15.
In the public participation portion of the meeting, several police officers called in.
Police Cpl. Wes Carroll told the council that police officers deserve more than the one-size-fits-all bonus.
“I can’t fathom the possibility of giving every city employee the same COVID relief check.” Police officers were critical during the pandemic. “We don’t get to log off at 5 p.m.”
Officer Josh Wax, treasurer of the Novato Police Officers Association, was a bit more graphic.
“Officers were spit on and bitten” during the pandemic, he said. “Dispatch never closed.”
He added: “The police department’s work can not be compared or looked at as the same as everyone else. You cannot Zoom or virtually handle a husband and wife in a physical fight in front of their children, a child not breathing or a resident’s home being burglarized, just to name a few.”
Sue, a city employee, picked up on that point.
She said the number of officers leaving is “heartbreaking”. They didn’t have the option to work from home. Officers were exposed to COVID and brought it home, adding “Why is the city treating all employees the same?” Some employees could work from home. Officers could not.
SYSTEMIC WOES
After public comment, Councilmember Denise Athas steered the council in the broader discussion of police retention.
The Council “needs” to have a separate discussion on an adjusted police department bonus above and beyond the regular city employee as well as a long term pay fix to solve “systemic” retention issues.
Councilmember Pat Eklund asked staff about whether any other city employees aside from police officers were also not allowed to work from home and had to interact with the public.
City Manager Adam McGill, who formerly headed the police department before taking the city manager job, said there were other employees who worked in the field during the pandemic. Maintenance workers performed clean up and repair work, but it would be difficult to quantify what kind of risk they were subject to compared to police officers.
Ekund said “I guess I’d like to have a better understanding” of how many non-police officers were also subject to similar COVID risk.
McGill said staff could try to grade risk, but “it would be a challenge.”
Athas said it is a fool’s errand and “slippery slope” to try to adjust bonus amounts based on who was more at risk.
The big issue is overall police pay, she said.
Councilmember Mark Milberg agreed. He supported enacting the bonus for all employees now, saying one-size-fits-all bonus does not “diminish” the value of police officers. He supported another discussion to “look for other remedies” to solve the problems at the police department.
Councilmember Sue Wernick agreed with Athus that the city is going to do “something different” to address the long term issues at the police department.
“A bonus is great, but it’s not a long term solution,” she said, predicting that the long term solution is “not a simple thing” and will be a “lively discussion.”
BOMBSHELL
Later in the conversation, Councilmember Eklund dropped a bombshell for the first time in public about the financial health of the city.
After Mayor Lucan suggested that to address long term solutions to police pay the Council may have to wait to address it in the next budget cycle, Eklund revealed that the Council does not even know precisely how much money it has.
Bank statements were not regularly reconciled, she said. “Previous management did not keep all the records straight.”
“We do not have a thorough understanding of where all the money is,” adding that with city finances “There’s a lot of uncertainties.”
The revelation from Eklund was not further discussed or explained at the Feb. 8 meeting.
HOW IT WORKS
Here’s how the bonus will work.
Full-time employees who worked in 2020 will receive $1,000 or $2,000 on April 1, depending on whether they worked a regular schedule or less than six months of paid time. A second payment in April 2023 will provide employees either $1,500 or $3,000, depending on whether they worked a regular schedule or less than six months’ time in 2021.
Part-time and seasonal employees, council members and employees who were on leave for more than six months of the year will not receive the bonuses.
The Council was told by staff that the bonuses will cost city taxpayers $858,000. The bonuses are expected to cost about $858,000 and be funded out of the $9.1 million the city will get from the American Rescue Plan Act.
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