A Minneapolis City Council Committee is taking public comment Monday afternoon on a new police contract that includes a nearly 22% wage increase for Minneapolis Police Officers.
"We are proposing here that we pay our officers so that they are in a very competitive range across the metropolitan area, which is our major area here in the Twin Cities, for recruitment," City Operations Officer Margaret Anderson Kelliher said.
Michelle Gross is with Communities United Against Police Brutality and is urging the committee to reject the deal.
"We're not against collective bargaining," says Gross. "In fact, we quite favor it. But we also want to speak out about a contract that proposes historical raises with our tax dollars without corresponding reforms."
The committee was expected to decide on Monday whether to advance the contract to a final vote next week.
The contract ratified by police union members in early June calls for an historic increase in base pay across three years, retroactive to January 2023. The Minneapolis Police Department has struggled to reach staffing levels required by the city charter and increasing pay is one way they think can help draw more officers back in.
"Obviously now, more and more than ever, we need to have a good contract with compensation that is sufficient to recognize the challenges and the difficulty of the unique difficulty of this job. Not just in this state, in this region, but in the country in general," Police Chief Brian O'Hara said, speaking with WCCO's Adam and Jordana after the contract was initially sent to the council.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in June that council members had been given plenty of time to see what was in the contract and how it was coming together.
"There has been time, council members have been able to weigh-in," Frey said. "There was all-day briefing. The contract itself was more transparently than ever before, put before the entire public in a red-line fashion so everybody could see. That happened June 7th."
