Following an extended round of negotiations between the city of Upland’s seven employee bargaining units and city manager Stephen Dunn, all 277 of the city’s full-time employees have agreed to pick up the full nine percent employee match of their pension system contributions.
Over the last two decades, the city had agreed to make for its employees a major portion of the contributions normally made by those employees to capitalize their retirement fund. Under the terms of the employees’ retirement system, each year nine percent of each employee’s salary was paid into the city pension pool. But in the case of the city’s non-safety employees, they were only paying 5.2 percent and the city was supplying the other 3.8 percent. Firefighters were laying out 5.8 percent and the city was picking up 3.2 percent. In the case of policemen, the city’s taxpayers were augmenting their pay with the full nine percent contribution.
Dunn succeeded in getting all employees to agree to make their own pension contributions as of July 1. He calculated that change will result in the city saving $2.3 million throughout fiscal year 2013-14 and 2014-15. The fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.
The move will go a considerable way toward redressing the city’s current trend in unbalanced budgets, in which spending outruns revenue by nearly $2 million per year.
The employer contributions in the form of the pension fund payments were locked into place after having been negotiated by former Upland City Manager Robb Quincey. Quincey negotiated for himself a contract that gave him the same raises as those received by the city’s police officers. He worked out a deal that gave the police union’s members a 3.5 percent raise in 2011 and another 3.5 percent boost in 2012. The police were the only employees to be provided raises since 2010.
Quincey was suspended from his position in January 2011, a little more than a month before the indictment of former Upland Mayor John Pomierski on bribery charges. Quincey was fired in May 2011 and in July 2012 lost a wrongful termination case he brought against the city. In October 2012, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office filed felony public office corruption charges against Quincey, including unlawful misappropriation of public money, gaining personal benefit from an official contract, and giving false testimony under oath. The charges against him are still pending.