Mayor Karen Bass’s four-year package of pay raises and bonuses with the Los Angeles Police Department would add an estimated $384 million to that agency’s annual budget by the end of the contract’s fourth year, according to figures compiled by the agency’s top negotiator. the city.

City manager Matt Szabo said the preliminary agreement with the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents police officers, would likely push police spending above $3.6 billion by 2027, up from the $3.2 billion which was budgeted for the current fiscal year, which began July 1.

Those estimates assume the department will have just over 9,100 officers by the end of the contract. And they’re sure to reignite the debate over LAPD spending at City Hall just months after the council signed off on Mayor Karen Bass’ plan to hire hundreds of new officers.

Councilman Eunisses Hernandez, a longtime advocate for moving money from the LAPD to other services, called the contract financially irresponsible and said she is concerned about how the city will pay for it if a recession hits.

Hernandez, who represents part of the Eastside, said she expects the pay raises, bonuses and other incentives over the life of the agreement to total $1 billion, leaving the city with no money to pay for the pay raises for thousands of other city employees. pay.

“I am very concerned that we will not move with equity because we have put such a huge investment into this contract, other contracts and other city workers are left behind,” she said.

The proposed agreement is part of the mayor’s effort to counter the steady decline in the LAPD’s workforce, which had 9,011 officers earlier this month, up from about 10,000 four years ago. In recent months, Bass has pushed for the hiring of up to 780 officers in the current fiscal year, plus the hiring of about 200 retirees on an interim basis.

Council Chairman Paul Krekorian, who sits on the council’s negotiating committee with Bass, said the deal would help the LAPD attract new recruits

,

by ensuring that salaries are competitive.

“Will there be tough choices to be made as we go forward? There will be,” Krekorian said. “But there will also be very unfortunate consequences if we don’t make this kind of public safety investment.”

The preliminary agreement goes to the council’s three-member personnel committee, which is headed by Councilman Tim McOsker, who represented the LAPD union for several years as an attorney and registered lobbyist at City Hall.

That panel will meet Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. to review the agreement. The full council will take up the agreement later today.

The vote comes at a time when violent crime has fallen compared to the same period last year. Murders fell 24% during the reporting period ending Aug. 12, while robberies fell 13%, according to LAPD figures.

At the same time, the department has seen a spate of police shootings over the past month this summer six.

Activists have raised the alarm over those incidents, two of which were fatal, with some accusing Bass of “coddling” the department. Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah said the LAPD “shouldn’t be rewarded for killing our people.”

“It’s unfair and it’s outrageous that the LAPD can just waltz in, the LA Police Protective League can just walk into the mayor’s office and say, ‘We want a 13% raise,’ and it’s given to them,” he said. she.

The salary deal was ratified earlier this month by members of the Police Protective League, which ran a costly campaign against Bass during last year’s mayoral election. However, the union has spoken positively about Bass’s focus on recruitment and retention in recent months.

In a statement Tuesday, the union’s board of directors said it wants to restore the ranks of LAPD officers “responsibly.” That goal is shared by “Bass and the vast majority of the City Council,” the union said.

“This contract represents a smart investment designed to keep Angelenos safe by providing incentives to retain experienced officers and recruit qualified candidates into the police academy,” the statement said.

Bass said in her own statement that the contract would help address what she called a crisis over LAPD hiring and retention. Of the 986 police officers who have left the department since mid-2017, 82% had been with the department for 10 years or less, according to city budget figures.

The proposed contract would increase officers’ starting pay by nearly 13%, while also providing four 3% increases over four years. That would put LAPD starting salaries above $86,000 higher than that

found it

in Pasadena, Long Beach and Burbank, but lower than those in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, according to Szabo’s report.

To deter agents from leaving for other agencies, the agreement would provide retention bonuses much earlier in an officer’s career, while larger bonuses would be provided to those who have been with the LAPD for more than a decade.

Those bonuses, combined with the planned pay increases, would increase officers’ total wages by 6% this year, 4% in the second year, 5% in the third and 5% in the fourth year, Szabo and the union said.

“By simultaneously increasing starting salaries and adding retention benefits for officers with less than 10 years of service, the proposed [contract] will provide greater incentive for newly commissioned officers to stay with LAPD, which will have an immediate impact on recruiting and retention,” Szabo wrote in his report.

Those arguments have not been convinced by council member Hugo Soto-Martinez, a former labor organizer who sits on the personnel committee. Soto-Martinez, who opposes the deal, said money is not the reason no one wants to join the LAPD.

“I think the most honest thing I’ve heard about why we’re on these LAPD numbers came from an LAPD officer,” Soto-Martinez said. “He told me that ‘no one wants to be a police officer because we have an image problem’.”

Bass earlier this year called for the LAPD to be restored to 9,500 officers by the summer of 2024. So far, the Police Academy classes have come nowhere near the 60 recruits it would take to achieve that goal.

Szabo said the city has money in this year’s budget to cover the first year of the union contract

to generate

an additional $123 million in salary, health care and pension costs. Because police hiring is slow, the LAPD is expected to absorb at least some of those costs, he said.

Szabo’s four-year estimate of $384 million was based on the assumption that the department would have 9,103 officers by 2027, fewer than the number Bass had envisioned in their budget.

The contract is for four years

cost

would reach an estimated $391 million if the city makes more progress with its hiring plan, reaching 9,293 officers, Szabo said. That’s the amount Bass hopes to take on over the next year, not including the retirees she hopes to bring back to the LAPD, he said.