Leaders of St. Louis city police’s bargaining union announced that they plan to rally against the half-cent sales tax increase for public safety proposed by Mayor Lyda Krewson because some revenue will go towards “social programs and other pet projects,” according to a letter sent from the St. Louis Police Officers Association’s executive board to its members on July 7.
“We are also planning rallies and an aggressive media campaign to drive our message home,” the letter stated. “We need to show the mayor and other elected officials that they woke a sleeping giant.”
The half-cent sales tax increase will appear on the ballot in November, now that the Board of Aldermen passed a board bill (BB60) on July 7 that outlined how the tax revenue would be spent.
If city voters approve the sales tax increase in November, then Krewson estimates that it would generate about $19.5 million every year – which would go mainly towards police and firefighter salary raises. An increase in sales tax would also trigger an automatic rise in the city’s business tax, or use tax. And that estimated $3.9 million in revenue would go towards social workers for the police department, afterschool programs, summer jobs, public defenders and recreation programming – or “pet projects,” as the union called them.
The union focused their ire at Krewson because “she certainly did not warn us that the proposed tax would be split up for a number of new programs unrelated to police pay.”
Somehow, the union sees the money that would go towards supporting crime prevention programs as a “slap in the face to every member.” They believe that both the $19.5 million in sales tax revenue and $3.9 million generated from the use tax should go directly towards their salaries.
The letter stated that the union decided to take their “case” to the full Board of Aldermen. On July 7, Alderman Jack Coatar of the 7th Ward led the effort – on the union’s behalf – to amend Board Bill 60 to earmark the full $12.8 million that the police were set to receive from the sales tax revenue for salaries alone. The original bill stated that $8.3 million would go towards salaries and $4.5 million for pensions and benefits. That would have forced the city to come up with $4.5 million to cover the pension and benefit costs – or reallocate the money for the “pet projects” for this purpose. Coatar’s amendment was defeated.
Alderman Terry Kennedy, who represents the 18th Ward and is the chairman of the aldermanic Public Safety Committee, was at a funeral when the full board voted on Board Bill 60 on Friday. He had not fully read the union’s letter but gathered the basics, he said. In response, he said that policing is only one part of crime prevention, and the programs that were proposed in Board Bill 60 are proven by experts to decrease crime.
“Social programming and work creation can begin to eliminate the crime indicators that lead people into crime,” Kennedy said. “Areas that have high crime have few recreational programs for youth. They have poor housing conditions, poor job opportunities, poor access to health care, and they have low standard educational institutions. You are looking at families of high stress, trauma and lack of social services. You cannot argue that there is some merit in funding programs that address those indicators.”
He also said that funding these programs and raising police salaries are both important.
“Police are not trained in social services,” Kennedy said. “When you don’t have the social services, you end up throwing that responsibility on them. They are not trained for that.”
Salaries and overtime
The letter states that St. Louis County’s recent sales tax increase to pay for higher police salaries has put the city in dire need to raise their own officers’ salaries – or lose them to the county.
The starting salary for a police officer in St. Louis County is $48,265, and in the city it’s $43,140, according to the city’s Budget Office. With the sales tax increase, the county will now start at $52,208, according to the county.
With the city’s increase, city officers could get about a $6,000 raise, said Paul Payne, the city’s budget director.
However, Payne said he has repeatedly tried to include one point into the conversation: “Our pensions are way better,” he said.
The city’s cost for police pension is at 45 percent of payroll, he said. For comparison purposes, St. Louis County’s pension cost as of the year 2015 was just under 23 percent of payroll, he said.
If the sales tax is approved, the police would get 66 percent, or $12,825,000, of the sales tax revenue and the fire department would receive 28 percent, or $5,475,000. Firefighters always receive the same pay raises as police by law; there are just fewer of them.
The money for police would go towards filling the 111 empty spots open on the force and towards pay raises, Krewson said.
The Circuit Attorney’s Office will get $1.2 million because reducing crime isn’t “all about cops,” Krewson said. The funds for both the prosecutors and public defenders ($975,000) will help get people to trial more quickly – rather than being detained in jail for long periods of time, she said.
The letter also states that the union will not sign off on “an agreement that doesn’t include significant raises and full funding of sergeants overtime.”
The mention of overtime was fairly bold considering that a recent audit by the Comptroller’s Office showed that the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department repeatedly violated the law and went over budget on overtime pay by almost $5 million between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016.
“There is no oversight review to control overtime pay budget, therefore, no incentive for section leaders to stay within the budget,” the audit stated.
The department spent $13.4 million on overtime, instead of the budgeted $8.5 million. This is because management of overtime was “inadequate,” it stated.
The audit gave examples of three officers who earned between $62,800 and $77,000 in overtime pay. The 342,400 of overtime hours in the audit’s timeframe “could not be verified whether or not the officers actually worked these hours because detailed time sheets and adequate supporting documents were not maintained.”
In response, the department told the auditor that staff shortages caused the excessive overtime hours.
Alderwoman Megan Ellyia Green of the 15th Ward voted against both Coatar’s amendment and Board Bill 60. She said the union’s stance on funding supportive services was “unfortunate.”
“We spend 0.3 percent of our budget on health and human services and 54 percent on public safety,” Green said. “The $4 million added to crime prevention programs is just a drop in the bucket of what the city needs for true crime prevention. I’d hope that the SLPOA would be committed to tackling the root causes of crime, not just adding more funds to their own budget, especially when there are $5 million in overtime funds that were spent by the department without the use of proper accounting procedures.”
