Update 11/22

Thank you for sending an email to our city supervisors demanding that they support essential city workers and reject the Police Officers Association contract.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors had a contentious hearing on this contract that lasted more than 3 hours. A majority of supervisors described the contract as a huge missed opportunity for police reform and acknowledged that it was a bad deal for the city. They blamed the Mayor and DHR for negotiating a bad contract.

A majority of Supervisors expressed fear that rejecting the contract could lead to city worker layoffs. But, that makes no sense!

• This POA contract saves the city $6 million this year (by deferring officer raises for 6 months), but it costs the city $36 million in 2022/2023

• There is already a $127 million hole in the budget because of COVID. An additional $6 million is not what will lead to layoffs

• Further, the city has 100s of million of dollars in rainy-day funds, which could be used to completely fill this gap.

What it ultimately came down to was -- most of our city supervisors are more concerned about being in the good graces of the Mayor than actually protecting essential workers.

The supervisors voted 9-2 to support the contract.

Support:

• Supervisor Fewer

• Supervisor Stefani

• Supervisor Peskin

• Supervisor Mar

• Supervisor Haney

• Supervisor Yee

• Supervisor Mandelman

• Supervisor Walton

• Supervisor Safai

Reject:

• Supervisor Preston

• Supervisor Ronen

However, the fight isn't over. There must be two votes to pass the contract. The second vote will be on December 1st.

I want to be clear though -- although our efforts weren't enough to win the vote yet, your emails made a difference. Supervisor Walton advocated for postponing the vote until the next meeting so he could gather more information, citing the flurry of emails he received that morning from city workers.

We'll be reaching out again with more actions we can take to put pressure on the supervisors prior to the next vote. I can't guarantee we'll win, but I can guarantee we'll make the supervisors feel the heat and hold them accountable to the essential city workers they claim to support.

Sincerely,

ProtectSFWorkers