Fremont is giving police officers a whopping 17% wage increase amid a pre-recession spending spree

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Fremont Mayor Lily Mei addressing police accountability activists who demanded she take a knee in 2020.

CITY NEWS

FREMONT

—MONEY GROWS ON TREES—Fremont Mayor Lily might be able to do a credible impression of Oprah Winfrey this week. “You get a raise! You get a raise! And you get raise!”

—Nearly every item on Tuesday’s Fremont City Council agenda involves employee groups receiving generous increases in pay and benefits. Even Fremont councilmembers are in line for a wage bump.

—But it’s the Fremont Police Officers Association that’s receiving the biggest windfall, a whopping 17 percent wage increase spread out over the next three years. Fremont police officers will get six percent wage increases over the next two years, followed by five percent in the third year. Fremont city staff estimates the three-year contract will gobble up nearly $6 million of the city’s operating fund.

—In addition, Fremont firefighters are also getting the same deal as Fremont police officers, a 17 percent increase over three years. However, the firefighters’ deal is estimated by city staff to cost $4 million over the life of the contract.

—The new contracts represent substantial wage increases and raise questions of fiscal prudence, especially in advance of an expected recession later this year, and the likelihood of significant belt-tightening over the next fiscal year.

—Five other bargaining groups (listed below) are slated to receive wage increases of, at least, 14 percent and totaling $8 million over the next three years.

• Fremont Assoc. of Management Employees - 14% increase; $3 million cost.

• City of Fremont Employees Assoc. - 14%, $3 million.

• Teamsters Local 856 - 14%, $1 million.

• Professional Engineers and Technicians Assoc. - 14%, $700,000.

• Fremont Battalion Chiefs - 17%, $300,000.

—The spending spree also includes Fremont’s new city attorney, city manager, mayor, and councilmembers. City Attorney Rafael Alvarado, only five months on the job, is recommended by Mayor Lily Mei to receive a five percent cost-of-living increase that will raise his salary by $15,400 to $309,750 a year. City Manager Karena Shackelford is offered the same increase. The $17,578 wage bump would increase Shackelford’s salary to $369,128 a year.

—The same night, the Fremont City Council will decide whether to give itself a four percent increase in pay. A city ordinance allows council pay raises tied to increases in the local Consumer Price Index, which topped over five percent this year. However, the ordinance only allows a four percent maximum annual increase. If approved, the increase takes effect after the November election.

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