A coalition of county organizations and community activists will officially announce the launch of a petition signature drive to demand a referendum as a formal recourse to revoke the County Supervisors self-awarded 33% raise.
The announcement will come today at 12:30 at the County Clerk-Recorder’s Office. 555 Escobar St., Martinez and is being led by Local 1 and the Contra Costa Deputy Sheriffs Association.
This action is based on Board of Supervisor votes on Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, the Supervisors salary now jumps from $97,483 ($8,123.28 per/mo) to $129,216 ($10,768.92 per/mo) annually—a monthly increase is $2,662.72. This action tied Supervisor raises to that of judges.
Over an 8-year period, the Contra Costa County Supervisors have increased their salaries from $58,200 (2006) to $129,216 (2014).
In response, Local 1 and the Contra Costa Deputy Sheriffs Association are leading the charge to get this decision reversed claiming the decision County services and County employees should belast, and the Supervisors should be first.
On Nov. 13, Ken Westermann, President Contra Costa DSA, explained have been given a cost of living increase while the Board of Supervisors received 33% increase in pay. In fact, over the same 7-year period the Board of Supervisors used to justify their raise, the Sheriff’s Deputies received an increase of just 6.2%.
“The sheriff’s office has seen an abnormally high attrition rate and have lost 40 sheriffs deputies to neighboring agencies,” said Westermann. “We had lost 42 sheriffs deputies the previous two years. We are the lowest paid and pay the highest in pension costs (13-20% to pension). We are having a hard time retraining our members while the county is now paying a lot of money to train and recruit. We are losing senior officers to BART, San Francisco, Richmond, San Ramon.”
Westermann calls the Change.org Petition a symbolic first step. To date, that petition has 2,038 signatures in just over a week since being launched.
Once the unions move forward with their petition and signatures, they will need to gather somewhere between 24,000 to 35,000 signatures once final numbers of the 2014 are confirmed by January 2, 2015.
If successful, the Board would be forced to reconsider the raise and at that point depending on their choice to accept or reject the raise, the issue would either die on Board action or the raise would then go to voters to decide if the Supervisors were to get a 33% raise. Salaries would then be frozen until the voters have a say.
Photo provided by Local 1
