Article Source: San Bruno Police Association:

On Tuesday, February 24, the members of the police and public gave public comments on the issue of the police contract negotiations during the City Council Meeting. Please follow the YouTube link to view the comments that starts at the 1:35:00 time code of the video. Here is the link for the video:

https://youtu.be/KAGMYLEadRw?si=DbdC6DeiX2R9Kj-T

Please share this letter to all of your concerned neighbors and urge everyone to write to their City Councilmember and/or the City Manager to express their concerns.

Below is the update from the San Bruno Police Association:

First off, I wanted to thank you profoundly for the support you have given us over the last few months and for providing an outlet for us to more directly inform our beloved residents about what is occurring with their police department.

We are tired. We have faced weeks upon weeks with no communication from the City between the handful of negotiation meetings we have had since September. In the meantime, developments continue across the City, more money is being placed into reserve accounts, other bargaining groups are signing contracts, and salaries at neighboring police agencies are increasing in leaps and bounds. The City first offered us a negative raise, which was a major hit to morale, followed by mediocre offers that kept us at the bottom of the pay scale in our county. Now we have at least a half a dozen officers in a department of roughly 45 (with only about 20 on patrol) leaving, with 4 more retiring, along with dispatchers leaving - something we warned the city repeatedly about the last year but were ignored. This public safety emergency is getting worse by the week.

We are already working minimally staffed shifts and increased overtime, while investigative and countywide task force positions we participate in may have to be frozen to relieve an already exhausted patrol group. We have been providing service with such thin margins for years that it is catching up to us, and it will only get worse until something changes. A sobering fact: We have the same amount of officers working in this city since 1979. Despite numerous disasters like the Pipeline Explosion, YouTube Shooting, increased calls for service, double the population, along with development projects that will lead thousands more people to move to our city, the city government seems hellbent on keeping us underpaid and understaffed. In fact, it's only getting worse as we were informed this week that the city is cutting dispatch positions back because we can't fill them - which is an even deeper hit to morale. At the same time, the city wants to spend money to hire consultants to study if the police department is understaffed, appears to want to outsource our code enforcement employees to a private entity, and continues to approve discretionary spending items.

The human element of this has been profoundly forgotten by City government. We have tired, demoralized, and exhausted Police Department employees who are being recruited by surrounding agencies for their experience and expertise. All we want is to continue serving the residents of this wonderful city, many of us have worked for, in some cases, for a decade or more.

The City has finally reached out and scheduled a meeting with us for next week. We are hopeful our residents will provide comment cards at the upcoming Council meeting, attend in person to speak, or simply come to show their concern for the impact the city's actions are having on public safety. To all of our residents: Thank you for the outpouring of support during this difficult time. Paychecks and City management are not what keep us coming to work. If this were about money, we could all work elsewhere and receive an instant 20% raise. It is about being treated fairly by City management for the service and sacrifice we give every day in San Bruno, while providing the people who visit and live in this city the public safety service they deserve before more experinced employees leave and we come a vessel of an agency that is a springboard for officers and dispatchers to gain training and experince before taking it somewhere else.

Thank you,

San Bruno Police Association

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