News

 Carney’s letter to residents heightens years-old debate on cost of public safety

Related: Police chief resigns amid turmoil, takes top job in Longboat Key

By John Pacenti

The war of words between Delray Beach Mayor Tom Carney and the Police Benevolent Association went nuclear in June. 

The mayor unleashed a scathing email newsletter to residents, saying that the union’s position on the stalled contract negotiations is “driven solely by personal gain rather than the department’s or taxpayers’ best interest.”

The Police Department’s lead union negotiator, in the meantime, says 26 officers — including seven near the end of June — have left since negotiations started a year ago, alarming some in the community who have pressured the City Commission to capitulate before the release of a mediator’s recommendations, expected this month.

Carney has given no quarter when it comes to the police union’s proposal for an extension of a special retirement program that would benefit, he says, only the top few in the department. That sticking point has stalled negotiations for months.

Carney has dared the union on several occasions.

“Let the members vote, because the new officers like this pay package, because what they’re interested in is being able to buy a house, they want to go on vacation, they want to buy a boat, they want to do something. They want some disposable income,” Carney told The Coastal Star.

The city has offered a $15.3 million increase over three years, raising starting salaries to $72,000 — up from $61,000. Third-year salaries will increase to more than $80,000, he said.

Carney went deeper with the late-night email on June 16 to residents, saying two union negotiators were trying to line their own pockets by bloating the compensation by $2 million each.

Not a DROP in the bucket

The issue is extending the DROP — the Deferred Retirement Option Program — that allows an officer eligible to retire to continue working while accruing retirement benefits for a fixed period of time. A participating officer earns the regular salary and a pension — with the latter going into a special account that’s paid out when the DROP period ends and the officer officially retires.

DROP is used as an incentive to retain veteran officers. Instead of officers retiring so they can begin collecting  pensions and start new jobs elsewhere, DROP allows them to keep working for the city while receiving pension benefits.

The union wants to extend the DROP program period from five years to eight years, allowing three years of additional pension to be deposited into a DROP account while an officer continues to earn a regular salary.

Carney, in his email, said the union two years ago opposed extending the DROP, arguing it would stifle promotions. The PBA has since changed its tune because the negotiators have skin in the game, the mayor said. “This blatant reversal underscores their hypocrisy.”

Battle tactics

The issue has become personal. The PBA trotted out mobile billboards — one during the St. Patrick’s Day parade — castigating Carney as allowing crime to skyrocket. The mayor says those are lies and produced crime statistics showing it is down in major categories from last year.

“They wanted to politicize it, just like they wanted to politicize the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” Carney said. “They want to politicize everything so that a few people at the top could get an extra three years of salary and benefits.”

In a show of support for the PBA, police officers came out in force at the commission’s Feb. 18 meeting, filling nearly every seat in the gallery. The tattooed officers — an intimidating presence in the view of many onlookers — puffed up their biceps as John Kazanjian, PBA’s Palm Beach County president, told elected officials the city is the second-lowest municipality in pay and benefits in the county and that officer morale is low.

“The city of Delray is that close to being in a crisis,” he said. “People need to realize this is no joke.”

Boca Raton, for instance, says it has one of the nation’s highest starting salaries for officers — $87,491 a year with a seven-year DROP. Boynton Beach has a starting salary of $73,000 and an eight-year DROP. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office offers a starting salary of $72,564 for deputies and an eight-year DROP.

The union’s side

The PBA has complained that the city hasn’t taken negotiations seriously since they started a year ago, with officials at the table who don’t have the authority to make decisions. In November, the PBA sent a letter to City Manager Terrence Moore complaining that he had not attended any negotiations.

Moore is not part of the city's seven-member negotiating team, which includes the city attorney.

Meer Dean, a sergeant with the Delray Beach Police Department and the treasurer for the PBA’s county chapter, said the mayor is engaging in the very politicking he criticizes. For instance, a Carney talking point about officers receiving “free” health care is just not true — they have paycheck deductions for their insurance policies like anybody else and have co-pays, he said. 

Whatever money the mayor thinks he is saving the city by opposing the DROP extension is countered by replacing and training those officers who have left — estimated to cost $362,000 apiece, Dean said. 

“Taxpayers are paying over $6 million to watch people leave,” he said.

Dean doesn’t mince words about what the failure to properly negotiate means for the city. “If the city doesn’t want to pay to attract and retain officers, then it might be time to have the commission ask Sheriff Bradshaw to give them a quote to contract police services in the city,” he told The Coastal Star, referring to Ric Bradshaw.

Casale teams with Carney

Commissioner Juli Casale — another target of the PBA’s billboards — says she believes Dean’s figures are incorrect, in part because he may be adding in the annual salaries of the new recruits.

Carney said the average length an officer stays in Delray Beach is 3½ years so attrition is normal. He said the city has five new officers in training.

Carney and Casale came into office last year without union endorsements — which increasingly are not carrying weight in Delray Beach.

“The union no longer has a commission stacked in its favor,” Casale told The Coastal Star. "The contracts are being reviewed and properly scrutinized. It's time for the union to bargain in good faith."

She doesn’t think residents are getting the full picture.

“This isn’t about politics. This is about cold, hard cash we don’t have,” she said at the June 3 commission meeting. “We have offered $15.3 million in increases. We are not going to get $15.3 million in revenue increases from property taxes this year.” 

Carney agreed, saying: “People don’t understand what’s been offered, what’s been asked.” He said commissioners don’t negotiate — they just accept or reject the proposed contract.

Long backs union

The PBA has an ally on the commission in Vice Mayor Rob Long, who at the June 17 meeting read a lengthy statement calling former Chief Russ Mager’s impending departure “a rupture” and an “indictment of how this city has handled public safety at the highest level.”

Long told The Coastal Star that Carney is desperate because the public is lining up in support of the union’s position as officers continue to leave. He said Carney and Casale are being “disingenuous and inaccurate” when they refer to the DROP as “double-dipping.”

Long said to remain competitive with other municipalities, the city needs to extend the DROP to eight years.

“What my colleagues are doing is based on ideology and it’s based on politics. It’s not based on what’s best for the city and what’s best for the residents and what’s best for our police,” he said.

Long said the department is now at its highest number of vacancies ever and it takes about a year to get a rookie trained.

As for the expense, Long said the city asked for a third-party analysis and was told extending the DROP would actually save $8 million. “Every single expert has told us the DROP extension will not cost us money,” he said.

Other voices

Commissioner Tom Markert — elected with Carney and Casale last year — is believed to side with the mayor, while Commissioner Angela Burns — who often votes alongside Long — sides with the union.

Markert didn’t return phone calls or texts. He said at the June 3 meeting that his family comes from law enforcement, yet he was critical of the union. 

“There is nobody up on the dais who cares more about law enforcement than I do,” he said. “I think some of the tactics have been hurtful, and I want it to stop, and I want it to be over, and I want to get back to the relationship with the Police Department that we always had and enjoyed.”

Burns says she doesn’t speak to the press but did say at the June 3 meeting, “My hope is the city and the union can come to a consensus on something that is fair and sustainable for everyone, and I'm looking forward to that.”

Paul Cannon, a member of the city’s police advisory board, spoke at the June 3 commission meeting:  “I’ve got one very simple ask, and that is, I want you guys please put your politics aside, let’s put the toxicity aside. Let’s get everybody in the room. Let’s have a conclave. Let’s figure this out, and don’t come out of that room until you’ve got a settlement, and let’s do it while we still have a Police Department.”

Former Mayor Shelly Petrolia says the real issue is that the city gave away the store to the fire union for its last contract and now the police want their share. She says these increasing contracts for police and fire — whose departments make up more than half of the city’s operating budget — are financially unsustainable.

“But the moment that you start saying anything about the police or the fire, you no longer care about safety. That’s what they do,” Petrolia said. “They start this whole campaign against you. …”

She said that is why so many commissioners — past and pre-sent — capitulate to the unions.

Fire union sees success

It appears the fire union has again gotten what it wants after doing a bit of politicking. IAFF City Local 1842 posted a photograph of a giant inflatable rat outside City Hall on its Facebook page before a June 10 commission workshop, claiming the administration was aiming to put public safety at risk.

Carney and the commission — possibly not wanting a two-front union war — gave its nod to the department’s proposed $52 million budget that would fund the union’s demands for three men per truck per shift.

“They made a compelling public safety argument. They needed it for public safety to save lives,” Carney said.

Political activist and observer Andre Fladell said the police and fire contracts should not be conflated — nor their political activism. The fire union is much more aggressively involved in local races, he said.

However, the PBA’s strong-arm tactics here have backfired, in Fladell’s opinion.

“The communication broke down between what we call the police union and the city electeds,” he said. 

“Why did the communication break down? Because for the first time, you had union reps that weren’t communicating. They were marching in the street, and they were doing things that were offensive, and the communication relationship levels broke down.”