Akron City Council has approved a plan to pay for a police union contract that officials in Mayor Shammas Malik’s administration previously said the city could not afford.
Major cuts to city personnel and services are on the table now that the city has agreed to fund the new contract with members of its police union. The measure approved in a 12-1 vote Nov. 3 enables the implementation of the contract.
Malik told the Beacon Journal spending will be closely examined before the 2026 operating budget is introduced in March.
“We are looking at each department across the city,” said Malik, “and have been actively working with the cabinet and department directors around what their costs are.” He declined to elaborate on what cuts might occur “until we have something cohesive to share.”
The terms of the contract will raise officer pay 5% this year, 4.5% in 2026 and 4.5% in 2027 — a 14% increase over three years that represents “the largest wage increase in at least the last 30 years of our labor negotiations,” Malik said on Oct. 20.
City officials said previously the city was not prepared to pay for raises of this magnitude.
“We would be facing fiscal caution by 2027 with less than 30 days cash on hand and by 2029, would need to cut between 100-180 city jobs,” Finance Director Steve Fricker warned in May. “The recommendations are not a sustainable path forward for our residents or our workforce.”
Malik clarified that those projections were made without including cuts to services or personnel, which are now under consideration.
Fricker said cuts could also be made to city services.
Income tax revenue is down 2% over last year, Fricker said — the first down year since 2022 — meaning the city needs to find new revenue sources. Malik wasn’t prepared to discuss fresh ways the city might generate income.
Money from the city’s Issue 4 reserves — a 2.25% income tax which must be spent on police, fire and roads — can be utilized to support the raises but, said Malik, it will mostly deplete the fund.
“I feel very confident that if you’re asking residents, should we put a dollar toward a capital improvement or a dollar toward police and fire staffing personnel levels, they’ll talk about how important those staffing and personnel levels are,” said Malik. “That’s what we hear all the time — the need for responsiveness to calls for service.”
Akron City Council passed an amended version of the funding ordinance at its Nov. 3 regular meeting. The previous version included two cost-of-living raises for “employees in the non-bargaining, management and unclassified job classes, including elected officials.” The first, retroactive to Jan. 1, 2025, was for 3%; the second, which was to be effective Jan. 1, 2026, was for 2.25%. The new version scrapped both raises, and a one-time payment equal to 1% of their increased yearly pay rate.
“At this time we are still evaluating the affordability of the non-bargaining increases,” a city spokesperson said via email, “so it is possible that the structure of the increases will change. In the coming days, we plan to introduce an additional ordinance.”
At-large Councilman Eric Garrett cast the lone voted against the measure. He said the new contract “does nothing to move our community forward in terms of how police are treating our members of our communities, our constituents.”
He said the police are still able to abuse people verbally and physically, even shoot them, with no accountability. Garrett said the police oversight board, brought into existence by the city’s voters, is toothless — and the contract does nothing to address that.
At-large Councilman Jeff Fusco said he supported the measure because “the majority of our police officers do a great job. They signed up for this job knowing full well that every day they go out, there’s a risk; a risk they could be shot at, a risk they could be harassed, et cetera.”
Council President Margo Sommerville said it would have been nice to see some reform measures included in the contract, but as legislators it wasn’t City Council’s job to negotiate the agreement. She said the Akron Police Department is made up of many good officers. Sommerville said she’s looking to Malik to hold officers accountable when they don’t perform up to the standard expected of them.
“The reality of it is, we know that we’ve got work to do,” she said, “and we’ve got a lot of work to do and we’ve got to do it together. The reality of it is we know that the police force is not perfect. That’s why we’re investing to do a use-of-force review. We’re going to spend money to be able to hopefully address some of those things.”
Contact reporter Derek Kreider at DKreider@Gannett.com or 330-541-9413.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Police contract gets Akron council’s approval. Now, city faces tough spending decisions
Reporting by Derek Kreider, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
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