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SANTA ANA POLICE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION 1607 NORTH SYCAMORE SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA 92701-3513 \[714\] 836-1211 FAX \[714\] 836-6108 July 7, 2020 SANTA ANA CITY COUNCIL 20 CIVIC CENTER PLAZA P.O. BOX 1988, M31 SANTA ANA, CA 92701 Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council: I am the President of the Santa Ana Police Officers Association (POA). The POA represents the rank and file sworn and non-sworn employees of the police department in their employment relationships with the city. Lately, police associations around the country are portrayed as bad and protecting bad officers. We do not do that. We exist solely to provide our members the medical and dental benefits and labor negotiations component. We do not provide legal defense rather the officers purchase their own legal defense plans. I think our relationship can be best described as one based on mutual trust and reverence for good governance. In the Great Recession of 2008, when the economy of the nation was teetering on the brink of disaster, your labor negotiator came to the POA and told us that the city was close to bankruptcy. We were skeptical but based on a relationship stretching over 50 years, we sat down with our partners at city hall and in the city administration and worked out an arrangement, foregoing agreed upon raises and deferring benefits, that was critical in keeping the city solvent. We were the only city labor group to make concessions, to defer benefits, and to come to the aid of the city. Now, we find ourselves in an unprecedented time, facing a global pandemic that has pushed the city into a financial predicament again. In Santa Ana, the cost of the coronavirus appears to be overwhelming for both the economy and the public health. The carefully crafted budget that you labored to put in place is of concern, bombarded by the loss of revenue that the virus has brought. Because of the current world pandemic that no one could have predicted, the POA reached out to the city administration in an effort to meet the financial issues head-on with a plan to bring some relief to the budget. Then, as we were thinking through the contract issues, the world was hit by nationwide civil unrest. Rather than dollars and cents, we sought to direct our efforts towards dollars and sense. st The dollars in our equation is the raise that we are due under the contract on July 1 of this year. We are going to forgo that raise for the time being. We will take part of it in January of next year and the rest at the end of the 2020 2021 fiscal year. We will extend the contract for an additional six months so that when we next discuss dollars, we will hopefully have a better idea what a post pandemic economy looks like.