Note: The transcript of this meeting is dated September 2, 2025, but the instruction specifies the meeting took place on September 4, 2025. This summary uses the assigned date.
The Columbia City Council held a pre-council meeting on September 4, 2025, to hear a presentation from the Columbia Police Lieutenants Association regarding ongoing labor negotiations. The association highlighted chronic pay compression where sergeants out-earn lieutenants due to overtime, and warned that this threatens leadership succession as 80% of senior command become eligible for retirement within the next five months.
Alright, good evening. I'll go ahead and call the Columbia City Council pre-council for September 2nd, 2025 to order. I think the only thing on our agenda is a presentation from our Columbia Police Lieutenants Association. So I'll kick this over to Clinton. Thank you. You want to use the microphone, if you mind. I mean, I guess there's not as many people in here, but it'd be nice to hear you. I mean, if you're gonna talk to us, it would be nice to hear you. So it's for some of us. You'll hear me already. No, that's not true. Everybody assumes that, but that's not true. So, Madam Mayor and members of council, thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Columbia Police Lieutenants Association. And while we're here to talk about the progress of labor negotiations, the bigger problem is the future of leadership at CPD, and I'm going to show you how the process of labor negotiations now is going to affect that future. And unfortunately, you're going to hear the same things you heard from the other labor groups, which is there's just not good faith bargaining on the part of the city. There hasn't been. Good faith bargaining is coming to the table. It's listening, it's engaging, and it's tailoring the outcomes to the group. And in the years that we've been bargaining with the city, that has never happened. We have brought the repeated concerns of the lieutenants up and offered solutions, and they are rejected. So quick history. We had a hiatus with collective bargaining for several years and came back in 2022 and reformed the association. And from there, some of our goals and objectives that have been available, you can find those in the history. The only thing that we really accomplished out of this was a written collective bargaining agreement in 2023. Everything else has essentially been rejected by the city. This year, the timeline's been a little skewed. We were asked to hold off on meeting until they got some sales tax figures back. And when we did meet, we were told the same thing all the other labor unions were, which is there's no money. You're not getting anything. Yet three weeks ago they announced a budget where everybody in the city was getting something. And between then, there's been a couple meetings where we've made offers, suggestions to take baby steps in solving some of the problems that we're facing, and yet they come back with the exact same offer that they're offering everybody. A blanket offer is not good faith bargaining. That is surface bargaining. Offering us what they offer, everybody else is not tailoring the results to the needs of our group. There's eight of us. And they're not fixing the problems. They've accepted zero pay proposals in the last four years. And we have brought up consistently our number one concern is that our subordinates out-earn us. It is easy for a police sergeant to out-earn a police lieutenant by working overtime. They are hourly, they are not exempt, we are, we understand that. And our argument is it should not be impossible. There are some sergeants that work extremely hard. But it should be difficult to out-earn your supervisor. The running joke in the middle of the night when we get called in is that your sergeant's making more than you are right now. And it's true. And in fact, last year one sergeant out earned an assistant chief of police. That is what goes to the future of the leadership of the Columbia Police Department. There is almost no interest in promoting to the rank of lieutenant. The number one complaint is the pay. They make more, they work less, and they have less responsibility as a sergeant.