San Bruno police seek higher pay

As San Bruno renegotiates labor contracts with a majority of its employee groups, including the police and fire units, City Manager Alex McIntyre also acknowledged that differing expectations mean the new contract deals remain unresolved. 

“There’s a lot of different expectations between the employee groups’ hopes and what the city really can responsibly afford to pay,” he said. 

The larger unions that represent these San Bruno employee groups, including Teamsters Local 856 and Teamsters Local 350, did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Some of that may be borne out of the city’s compensation policy, which states that San Bruno “strives to maintain” its employee compensation within the 75% percentile of the labor market, finances permitting. From McIntyre’s perspective, finances are not currently permitting. 

“I can’t put the city in a position that’s going to cause us to cut services down the road in order to maintain payroll,” he said. 

For Ledesma, coming into negotiations with an expectation that the city would try and offer police officers 75% of market rate salaries, only to be shot down, was surprising, he said. 

“When we came to the table, that’s the number we came with, and were basically told no, that we can’t ever get to that number,” Ledesma said. 

San Bruno’s 2025 base salary for police officers sits at $112,254 and is at the lower end of the county pay spectrum for sworn officer jobs. Other smaller cities like South San Francisco and Burlingame both have salaries in the $111,000 range, but larger cities like San Mateo and Daly City are paying starting officers nearly $30,000 more than San Bruno. 

Only about 17 of the approximately 70 sworn officers on the force are living in the city. That is largely an affordability issue, Ledesma said, particularly as officers look to buy homes and start families, and he added having a competitive salary is key to retainment. 

“We have fallen back in terms of other departments’ pay, when you have command staff from other agencies who would take a pay cut if they came here as our chief,” Ledesma said. 

While Ledesma said the force knows they’re unlikely to make as much as larger cities, the ask is simple — to be paid their worth, he said. 

Of the six employee units currently in negotiations with the county, police and fire leadership — both under one bargaining group — are also in contract talks. Various other employee groups, including the city’s department heads, are also negotiating their salaries. 

Those groups, too, have different expectations than what the city is able to meet, McIntyre said, however, contract negotiations, which originally began in August, are continuing through the holiday period and all parties are striving for a resolution. 

If deals aren’t finalized by the Dec. 31 deadline, the various employee groups will continue to operate under the old contracts, he said. 

“Labor relations can be difficult times for everybody,” McIntrye said. “Everybody wants the right thing, at the end of the day.”