Union leaders representing hundreds of San Jose police officers, firefighters and other workers said they shouldn’t be dealing with service and staffing cuts when the city has millions in reserve funds.
Leaders with the San Jose Police Officers’ Association and San Jose Fire Fighters Local 230 are arguing the city has the necessary funding to increase jobs and services amid upcoming budget discussions. To prove their case, the unions are citing various financial vehicles where reserves are housed.
“It’s hard for police officers to take the current budget situation seriously when millions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on things like high-priced, new age consultants teaching city workers how to apologize or to train city workers on how to create a basic word document,” Steve Slack, president of the police union, told San José Spotlight. “Enough with this wasteful spending and get focused on keeping San Jose safer.”
The police union, whose city contract expires June 30, asked the city for data that shows vacancies for sworn police officers has nearly doubled from 103 2022 to 201 in 2024. Net sworn police officers went from 1,140 to 1,073 during that time, according to a letter from the City Manager’s Office.
Police union representatives said years of sworn officer shortages led to slower response times for the most pressing first responder needs.
Slack added the city has a $2.4 billion investment portfolio and said the mayor and City Council need to answer why none of the money is pulled to cover position vacancies.
“Funds in the portfolio have been budgeted and are simply awaiting the time when they will be expended,” city spokesperson Demetria Machado told San José Spotlight.
Firefighter union leaders held a news conference April 2 to rally against citywide position vacancies and point out the city’s reserve funding ahead of the June budget approval. The union’s contract with the city is good until 2027.
“We’re deeply concerned, based on the budget message, that public safety isn’t a priority. After having the largest natural disaster and fire in our state’s history, we still have yet to prioritize public safety,” Local 230 President Jerry May said. “Services are still being cut and are not a priority.”
A spokesperson for International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE) Local 21 said there may be up to $80.6 million in vacancy savings in the city’s general fund. That’s based on the union’s own findings from a list obtained from the city showing vacated positions and associated costs. The union represents technical and administrative workers.
City officials dispute that amount and describe it as inaccurate. Machado told San José Spotlight the city is unsure of the methodology utilized to calculate this figure. She said the citywide vacancy rate of 9.42% is significantly lower than previous years.
“If the city were to experience personal services savings in the general fund of $80 million, that would be the equivalent of 7.3% of the personal services budget, over five times the 10-year average and nearly 15 times above the 0.5% experienced last year,” Machado said. “Such a level of savings is not plausible.”
May and union-represented city workers stood outside South San Jose’s shuttered Station 33 earlier this month to highlight how the depletion of services has negatively affected communities — as wait times for emergency responses in the neighborhood have grown longer.
The highest priority calls, which include imminent threats to life, went up from an average response time of 6 minutes in 2008 to 8 minutes in 2024. Second-highest priority calls went from an average response time of 11 minutes in 2008 to 28 minutes in 2024.
Union leaders said they are looking into how much the city spends on contracting work to private companies as a result of the vacancy-related service gaps.
“With the IT department alone, we found that there was $2.9 million worth of services being contracted out, just for (work related) to our Local 21 members,” Krista De La Torre, an IFPTE Local 21 representative, said. “That’s only one rock that’s being turned over. We want the city to turn over more rocks.”
Contact Vicente Vera at [email protected] or follow @VicenteJVera on X, formerly known as Twitter.
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