Stockton City Council members on Tuesday will consider new labor contracts for police officers, firefighters and public safety managers — a milestone for city workers who have gone nearly a year without a deal.
The first full regular meeting inside Stockton’s new City Hall comes with two major issues on the agenda: long-awaited labor contracts for public safety workers and a mayor-led discussion on the cost of council-launched investigations after a new civil grand jury report criticized City Hall for infighting, leadership problems and spending on internal probes.
The biggest items are on the consent agenda, meaning they could be approved together with little discussion unless a councilmember opts to pull them for separate debate. These agreements, known as memorandums of understanding or MOUs, are simply labor contracts. They set pay, benefits and work rules for city employees.
One agreement is with the Stockton Police Officers Association, covering July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2028. City documents say negotiators reached a deal that police union members have since ratified. It includes a 6% cost-of-living raise in the first year, 4% in the second, a one-time $2,500 payment, and changes to salary steps — the pay levels workers move through based on rank and time on the job.
A long road to the table
Officers had gone roughly five months without a contract before declaring an impasse in November and moving to invoke Measure N, a 2024 ballot measure that lets police and fire unions send stalled negotiations to a binding, independent arbitration panel.
“This may not concern those who view us as replaceable or unnecessary, but it matters deeply to those of us who serve every day, and it certainly matters to the residents who call 911 and receive a busy tone,” Stockton Police Officers’ Association’s president, Patrick High wrote in a Facebook post back in November.
High said at the time that staffing shortages were forcing officers who’d normally patrol the streets to instead cover dispatch shifts.
Firefighters faced a similar standoff: by mid-August they had gone 44 days without a new contract, with their union president warning that the delay was hurting staffing and retention. The firefighters eventually reached a tentative deal later that month after the city agreed to add longevity pay, though paramedic pay remained unchanged.
“While city leadership continues their in-fighting, your firefighters continue to work day and night for your safety,” the union said back in August. “Stockton Firefighters (per capita) are among the busiest in the State, and the least staffed in the State. Local 456 is only asking for a fair contract.”
The August contracts covered the unions for one year while the city and unions later moved toward new longer-term agreements. The deal before the council Tuesday is a new two-year successor agreement.
City documents estimate the new police contract terms — including raises, one-time payments and pay-step changes — would add about $9.47 million in costs this fiscal year and $8.13 million next fiscal year. Those figures do not represent the city’s full cost for police officer pay. Most of the added cost would come from the General Fund, which pays for basic city services.
The council will also weigh contracts with Stockton Firefighters Local 456 — covering both the fire unit and fire management — running July 1 through June 30, 2028. These include a 6% raise in the contract’s first year and 2% in year two, plus salary step changes, limited vacation cash-out costs, and higher healthcare premium contributions by the city. The estimated cost is about $4.82 million this year, with $3.96 million from the General Fund.
A third item covers the Stockton Police Management Association and unrepresented management, certain nonunion admin and support staff who work in various other city departments like the city manager’s office or city attorney’s office, costing roughly an additional $3.24 million this year, including $2.22 million from the city’s General Fund.
Altogether, the three labor items add roughly $17.5 million in costs to this fiscal year’s budgets, according to budget amendments attached to the agenda. The city’s current budget includes about $202 million for police and about $102 million in total operations costs, including payroll.
These long-awaited contracts arrive as public safety remains a top concern for the city. Stocktonia reported earlier this month that the city saw a violent June that nearly doubled the number of Stockton homicides this year .
Fugazi to lead discussion on council investigations
City Hall tension will also be part of the backdrop Tuesday. Mayor Christina Fugazi will also be leading a discussion on council-launched investigations and related costs.
Three documents will anchor council discussions on the issue: a confidential investigation’s executive summary, the 2025-26 San Joaquin County Civil Grand Jury report released last month that gave a scathing review of council and city operations, and a letter from the SJ County District Attorney’s Office.
The civil grand jury report, “Governance in Turmoil,” began as a look at possible violations of the Brown Act, California’s open-meetings law, but grew into a broader review of how the council operates. It found “systemic problems” in governance, unstable leadership, internal conflict, and lapses in legal and ethical standards, pointing to repeated 4-3 votes, public fights, and ongoing disputes as hallmarks of the current council, which took their seats last year in January. Those findings cap a turbulent year of leadership changes and public clashes, particularly between Fugazi and Vice Mayor Jason Lee.
The civil grand jury — a panel of residents that reconvenes yearly to investigate local government — also flagged investigation costs. The city budgets $500,000 a year for all investigations; a typical year uses $200,000 to $300,000. This year, the full $500,000 was reportedly spent by the midpoint of the fiscal year, though the civil grand jury said it couldn’t confirm how much went specifically to council-initiated probes.
One attachment also summarizes an investigation into the dissolving of the former Office of Performance and Data Analytics, the creation of the Office of Public Transparency, Information and Communication, and related hiring decisions. It found no evidence of General Fund misuse and didn’t substantiate that the City Manager’s Office broke policy or law by creating the new office without consulting council or explicitly citing it in last year’s budget, but it did find the process rushed and confusing, with some hiring choices falling short of best practices.
The final attachment, a June 25 letter from Assistant District Attorney Richard B. Price, says his office reviewed the city’s materials and found no basis for prosecutors to act against former interim City Manager Steve Colangelo, who was often at the center of several City Hall controversies before his departure in August.
Price was blunt in his criticism of the city’s pattern of referrals, writing that several requests over the past 18 months hadn’t met the threshold for his office’s involvement and had caused a “drain of resources.”
He closed by urging the council to “better work out their differences” and focus on serving Stockton residents.
No vote is expected on the investigations discussion — but it could reopen a public debate over how much the city has spent scrutinizing each other and its own officials, and whether that scrutiny has served residents or simply deepened City Hall’s political divisions.s.