City Employee Unions Have Volunteered to Take Wage and Benefit Cuts to Help Avoid Bankruptcy.
To help avoid bankruptcy, city employees, firefighters, and police volunteered to take more than $10 million in salary and benefit cuts.
The City could have averted bankruptcy - and still can - by accepting this offer.
These cuts, coupled with carrying out the recommendations of the independent auditing firm, would have given the City a $6 million dollar reserve.
Instead of solving the problems, the Council pushed the City into filing bankruptcy based on the recommendations of the City management and their high-priced lawyers, who will make millions of dollars in legal fees.
Read employee associations' detailed proposal for avoiding bankruptcy.
View a chart that compares cost for public safety officers in other cities.
Bankruptcy Hurts Taxpayers. It Will Put Public Safety at Risk. Vital Services Will Be Slashed.
Millions of dollars in legal fees, huge increases on bond payment interest, lower property values, and an inability to attract new residents and new businesses are all likely as the city enters bankruptcy.
These cuts mean less funding for firefighters, police officers, and critical community services like senior centers and libraries.
On top of life-threatening cuts to public safety, other important city services will be wiped out. Water quality will suffer. Emergency Dispatchers will be reduced. Clean safe parks will be at risk. Code Enforcement, traffic safety, and other service cuts will cause Vallejo taxpayers to suffer for many years to come.
Cutting employee and critical retiree benefits without changing the city's other obligations and the way it does business is unfair and especially harmful to retirees who earned those benefits over decades of service.
But these dire impacts are avoidable. Vallejo is in better financial shape than in many prior years, with $136 million in cash on hand.
The city's own staff has also identified millions of dollars in surplus properties, 18 different recommendations for increasing revenues, and tens of millions of dollars owed to the general fund that the city has made no effort to collect. Moreover, the city hasn't even applied for 3 years of funds owed to it by the state of California.
Bankruptcy Case Exposes Vallejo City Manager's 42% Pay Hike
Tanner Took $89,000 Raise in 2007 While Calling for Cuts to Vital City Services
Vallejo City Manager Joe Tanner confirmed in a legal deposition last week that he took a 42% pay increase totaling $89,000 five months into his job at the same time he was calling for salary reductions for other city employees and dramatic cuts to vital city services. Five months after being hired at a base pay of $216,000, Tanner renegotiated a deal with then-Mayor Anthony Intintoli to increase Tanner's pay to $305,000. At the time of the renegotiation, Tanner's job duties were not expanded and he had not received any job evaluation to justify the exorbitant raise.
Click to view the City Manager's lucrative contract and his memo calling for cuts to vital city services. 
2006 - 2007
