San Antonio and its powerful police union have reached a tentative bargaining agreement that includes a $102.2 million wage increase for officers over the next three years while balancing the city’s fiscal concerns, City Manager Erik Walsh said Friday.
Under the proposed three-year deal, San Antonio Police Department officers would receive a cumulative 16.5% increase in base pay, according to Walsh’s statement.
City officials and the San Antonio Police Officers Association have met 10 times since talks on a new labor contract began on Jan. 30. However, union members still must vote to ratify terms of the tentative agreement. City Council also must vote to approve the ratified contract.
The deal’s announcement comes roughly two weeks after Police Chief William McManus announced he’d pushed up his planned retirement by three months so he could step down in early July instead of late September.
“This agreement delivers meaningful pay increases and strong health benefits for our police officers while balancing the city’s long-term fiscal health and our ability to fund the mandated services residents depend on,” Walsh said in his statement. “Our goal was to keep San Antonio among the top three Texas cities in total police compensation, and this agreement accomplishes that.”
The city’s statement on the contract makes no mention of oversight stipulations that advocacy groups including police oversight nonprofit Act 4 SA asked for in the new contract. Among Act 4 SA’s requests were a cap on SAPD overtime hours, public disclosure of all police disciplinary records, the establishment of an independent civilian review board and shortening the contract’s evergreen clause from eight years to four.
Indeed, Act 4 SA Executive Director Ananda Tomas said Friday’s contract announcement came as a surprise, especially since she’d heard talks had reached a recent impasse. The proposed pay increase appears out of step with the city’s current fiscal situation as officials look for places to cut as they face a $158 million budget deficit, she added.
“It’s a contract that expands pay by millions and millions of dollars while we’re in the middle of a deficit that’s threatening funding for a myriad of other needed services and nonprofits,” Tomas said. “Why would you rush such an important, expensive decision in the middle of our budget crisis?”
Tomas said she suspects the city kicked negotiations into high gear after McManus’ early exit.
San Antonio city officials were unavailable Friday morning to discuss what impact the chief’s early retirement had on negotiations. They also were unable to immediately offer comment on what new oversight efforts, if any, are included in the proposed contract.
However, in his statement, Walsh added that his staff worked to reach an agreement with the union prior to the fiscal 2027 budget so city officials can have a “clear understanding of the costs” going into the next budget cycle.
In addition to the pay increase, the proposed contract would realign patrol schedules to better match staffing with peak call demand. The new model is intended to increase the number of officers available while offering better work-life balance for personnel, according to city officials.
Act 4 SA’s Tomas said she tried to meet with Walsh’s office on her group’s proposed reforms. However, that process took two months, and by the time the April meeting came about, city staffers said it was too late to bring them up in negotiations.
However, Act 4 SA isn’t giving up. She said some of the reforms, including the limits on overtime, could be implemented through changes to the police manual if there’s enough demand from City Council and the public. She pointed to the narrow 2021 ballot box defeat of Proposition B, which would have repealed the police union’s collective bargaining power, as proof San Antonians want more police oversight.
“I really just implore the city — both council members and the city manager’s office — to start engaging with the community beforehand [on the next contract],” Tomas said. “They could have been sending surveys or doing stakeholder meetings like they did for the police chief hiring back in November and December, or even October, of last year — and that never happened.”
Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
