Proposed meet and confer agreement offers areas of compromise, mutual benefit

In a process that has taken many months, members of the San Marcos City Council finally heard the particulars of a renegotiated meet and confer agreement between it and the San Marcos Police Officers Association.

At the regular Tuesday meeting of the council, City Manager Stephanie Reyes offered a concise explanation of the agreement, its proposed reform policies and an update on the new parameters of the three-year agreement that she said take into account city, police and community needs, starting with a prepared statement before a slide presentation.

City Manager Stephanie Reyes said, “Tonight’s presentation is what we committed to bring to you at the beginning of the meet and confer process in February. We are hoping it will provide helpful insight and information to the community about the recent negotiations between the city and the San Marcos Police Department.”

“We completed meet and confer negations in the Fall of last year,” she said, which culminated in the council approving a 3-year agreement on Sept. 6, 2022.

Reyes said that at the time both the city and the police department were in accord they had made considerable progress as to the strength of what they thought had been put forward. Agreed upon were criteria that took into consideration some but not all of the concerns expressed by the public in regard to several incidents involving former and current members of the police department over the last three years or more.

For background sake, Reyes said the new set of meet and confer negotiations was propelled by state law which allows community members to draft a petition, gather signatures and to present the petition to compel government bodies to either repeal an agreement or place it before voters. A group of citizens did “undertake this process” and a petition was presented in November 2022, and on Feb. 7 the council voted to repeal the agreement with an effective date of June 7, to allow time for new negotiations, rather than place it before the public for a vote and directed Reyes and staff to take on the process anew with parameters provided by a majority of council members, she said.

Meet and confer negotiations began on March 9 with six meetings overall.

For an agreement to be viable in the midst of this kind of scrutiny requires a balanced set of interests that offer mutual benefits to both parties, interests that must be kept at the forefront of the process, Reyes said.

Several key aspects of the negotiated agreement now include doubling the amount of time to investigate and administer discipline. “This is a progressive change not seen in many cities,” Reyes said, adding that it is a measure supported by both sides. The city was also able “to negotiate limiting the role of an arbitrator in substituting his or her judgment for that of the chief’s in certain circumstances,” as well as allowing for letters of reprimand to be considered during the promotional process, she said.

Many of the procedures followed by the police department are codified in state law, Reyes said, noting, for example, officers are allowed to review body-worn cameras during administrative internal review of their actions because it is required by law in the Texas Occupations Code.

Calling it a “robust” agreement, Reyes said it is scheduled to come before the council for consideration on May 16.

“I’m proud of the hard work my team and representative members of the San Marcos Police Officers Association put into a new agreement negotiated in such a short amount of time,” Reyes said, adding the agreement reflects a consensus between the police and the city.

“I acknowledge there are a lot of emotions and passion around these issues and some community members are displeased that this agreement does not go further. Please know we have respectively listened to interests from all perspectives and believe we have made measured progress,” she said, even if the agreement does not include every reform suggested by the public.

She cautioned that it is important to recognize these types of negotiations are not successful if lines are drawn and then there is no wavering from a list of set demands.

Interspace bargaining is critical and the agreement must also preserve a sense of pride and the professionalism within the department among its officers, while also calling for accountability, she said.

But she also said that the city acknowledges there have been “bad actors” and that the city will not tolerate them in the workforce going forward.

“We have diligently worked to improve the system, and to hold them [police] accountable,” recognizing in the end that there are no perfect systems and the city is bound to follow civil service law, as applicable and proscribed as to how we administer discipline.

“We cannot lose sight we have good men and women in the police department serving our city,” and should appropriately recognize their hard work and dedication to the community, she said. According to Reyes, Chief Stan Standridge is fully prepared to explain the benefits and significant progress inherent in the agreement to the members of the force.

“It is my hope that the agreement will be approved in two weeks so we can focus on other critical issues facing our community. These issues include critical police staffing shortages, low police morale with record high number of retirements, 150% increase in violent crime over the last decade, rapid growth and our inability to keep pace, the impact of new annexations on public safety, the growing mental health needs of our community, as well as traffic and pedestrian safety,” she said.

If they are sent back to the drawing board, she said it will impact the city’s ability to focus on bridging new relationships with the community and consuming time and resources that will deter them from turning to the other issues she said are so pressing at the moment.

Reyes and Standridge then went slide by slide through portions of the proposed agreement, starting with a timeline. Negotiations concluded on Monday, April 24, in time for the public presentation Tuesday.

Standridge rose to speak and initially misspoke saying “Abilene is my home,” but he and the audience laughed as he qualified it and said, “San Marcos is my home.”

This did have the action of lightening the steely feeling in the room as he then proceeded to point out what had been accomplished during the negotiations.

“In 2021, we spent an inordinate amount of time building strategies,” he said, meant to deal with mental health and the remarkable trauma that had faced the department in recent years, including the “serious off-duty, misconduct allegation associated with former officer and then 14-year veteran Ryan Hartman that involved the vehicular accident that took the life 56-year-old Jennifer Miller and critically injured her partner, Pam Watts.

Standridge echoed Reyes’ statement of what is facing the community saying that with a 42% increase in people there has been an accompanying 151 percent increase in violent crime.

“It is why I hope in 2023 you will approve this agreement. … There’s a ton of work to be done.”

There were five proposed Hartman Reforms: ending the 180-day rule which would repeal the statute of limitations on investigating wrongdoing by police officers; end delay of interviews for misconduct; public transparency for personnel files; end third-party arbitration; and end vacation forfeiture as a substitute for suspension.

According to Standridge, staff negotiated to keep the additional 180-day period, which doubles the amount of time specified by Civil Service. He said that a review of recent discipline cases “shows that these measures ensure misconduct is addressed in a timely manner.”

The Daily Record will have more on the agreement proposal. If the council votes to approve the agreement, its effective date will be June 8, the date after the other agreement is officially repealed.