Calexico Council approves two employee COLAs

CALEXICO — The increasing stabilization of the city of Calexico’s finances has prompted the City Council to authorize two separate cost of living adjustments (COLA) this year for its employees.

One of the 2 percent COLAs went into effect on Sunday, while an additional 2 percent COLA will go into effect on July 1. All of the city’s employee associations were authorized to receive the COLAs.

“It’s a token of the city’s appreciation for all of the employees who gave up concessions and did not receive any COLAs for 13 years,” City Manager David Dale stated in an email.

“We would not have been able to make it to this point financially without the bargaining groups working with the city.”

Depending on ongoing contract negotiations, the 2 percent COLAs may change for some of the city’s bargaining groups that either have expired memorandums of understanding or MOUs that expire at the end of this fiscal year, Dale said.

Mayor Bill Hodge said the authorized COLAs were justified by the “hard sacrifices” the city’s employees had been asked to make through the years, including salary cuts and larger contributions toward employee benefits.

With the city’s finances having rebounded since then, officials began discussing ways to restore employees’ compensation in good faith, Hodge said.

“We’re out of the red and have a surplus, but we have to be very careful,” Hodge said. “We still wanted to do something like (the COLAs) even if it was on a small scale.”

The COLAs were approved by the City Council in closed session during its Feb. 19 meeting. The COLA that already went into effect will have a projected cost of about $62,000 through the end of this fiscal year.

The July 1 COLA will have a projected cost of about $188,000 through the coming 2020-21 fiscal year, Dale said.

The city is projecting to have a positive fund balance at the close of the current fiscal year for the first time since 2014.

To date, about 47 percent of the city’s $16.4 million general fund budget has been expended, according to a budget status report provided to the council on Jan. 22.

A lack of internal financial controls were previously faulted for the city turning a $4 million surplus into a $4 million deficit from 2014 to 2016.