Union heads fire back on contract

The leaders of the union representing Costa Mesa’s firefighters fired back at critics of its new contract, saying that increasing pension benefits is in the city’s best interest, not the firefighters’.

As part of the city’s recent deal with the union, firefighters will be able to retire with 3% of their annual pay for every year they worked starting at age 50, instead of age 55, which it used to be.

For instance, a firefighter who starts at age 20 can now retire at age 50, after 30 years of service, and get 90% of his or her pay (the maximum allowed) each year.

In order to give its firefighters that benefit, Costa Mesa will have to pay CalPERS — the state’s public employee retirement system — an extra $700,000 each year. To make up for that benefit, however, the unions agreed to forgo a scheduled 4.9% pay raise, saving the city $660,000 per year.

Jeff Janzen, a fire captain and union negotiator who designed the proposal, said the increased retirement incentive is not something the union went after — it is something that the city needed to offer in order to get 12 people to retire early, and a negative for most people staying with the department.

“The 3% at 50 is not a win for us. This is a windfall for Costa Mesa,” Janzen said.

According to his calculations, only about 10% of firefighters remaining in the department will use the benefit, while the rest will opt to stay until 55 anyway because they need the extra years of service to ensure that they get the highest possible pension.

Without the incentive, only three employees agreed to retire early. With the incentive, nine more agreed to leave, of which Janzen, who is 51 and has been with the department almost 30 years, is one.

Yet even those employees who don’t retire before 55 will still have to pay for the opportunity to do so because Costa Mesa’s contract mandates that the city’s firefighters get the average total compensation given to firefighters in nearby cities like Newport Beach, Fountain Valley and Santa Ana.

Because Costa Mesa’s pension benefit used to be less expensive than all of the surrounding cities, who already had 3% at 50, the city’s firefighters got higher salaries than their colleagues. Now, that will no longer be the case.

Jim Righeimer, a former City Council candidate and Republican Party activist, still thinks giving the pension increase to Costa Mesa firefighters was a mistake. Pension increases can never be taken back, Righeimer said, but salaries and staffing levels are subject to the leanings of future City Councils and could easily be restored to higher levels.

“This City Council, like councils before us, has continued to ratchet up costs that can never be taken back. The last time the fire department had three openings, they received 400 applications in 36 hours. I think their pay and benefits are high enough,” he said.

Mayor Allan Mansoor had similar qualms and voted against the package along with Councilman Eric Bever, but fellow Republican Councilman Gary Monahan thinks it’s a good deal for the city.

“On the face of it, it doesn’t look good, but when you actually crunch the numbers, the numbers work, and we’re saving $2 million a year, which is way more than we asked them for,” Monahan said.

He thinks that, on a statewide level, pensions have gotten out of control, and doesn’t like 3% at 50, but in the specific case of Costa Mesa, he thinks the city will hardly feel the impact of the change because the same amount of money will be coming out of the city’s coffers.