Chula Vista Councilmembers Move to Award Themselves Huge Pay Raise 15%
By Jim Hinch0%
7/16/2026, 2:35:08 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Optimism Bias, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 24% saturation with 305 hits. Analysis detected 1,671 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,273 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 31.4% and a BS Rank of 15% (14,078 of 16,550 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.10% of the article peer group.
The Chula Vista City Council on Tuesday moved to place an initiative on the November ballot that would dramatically reshape the city’s government, including by giving councilmembers a $45,000 pay raise and extending their time in office by up to 12 years.
The initiative , authored and supported by a prominent San Diego County labor union, would make major changes to how the city elects, pays and assigns work to its elected officials.
In addition to raising councilmembers’ part-time salaries to a starting level of $110,127, the initiative would grant the mayor and councilmembers a total of three four-year terms in office, create a new permanent council budget committee, strengthen ethics and lobbying provisions and add a binding arbitration provision to city contract negotiations with at least some public employee unions.
The arbitration provision would require the city to submit to a neutral arbitrator when union contract negotiations reach an impasse.
Such provisions can give additional bargaining leverage to public employee unions, such as police and fire unions, that are prohibited from going on strike.
The Council on Tuesday moved swiftly to finalize the measure in advance of an Aug. 7 filing deadline.
Councilmembers discussed last-minute changes and moved to add one new provision.
The Council is slated to discuss the measure at least one more time later this month before voting to place it on the November ballot.
With the exception of a handful of residents who waited until the end of Tuesday’s meeting to voice their opinion, there was little public input.
The Council’s three Democratic members in attendance appeared supportive.
Councilmember Jose Preciado, also a Democrat, was absent.
Republican Mayor John McCann sounded the lone note of opposition.
He warned his colleagues that rushing to overhaul the city’s government without careful planning or extensive community feedback was foolhardy and could lead to public backlash.
“There are 13 charter amendments,” McCann said, referring to the ballot measure’s myriad changes to what serves as the city’s constitution.
“This is a major amount…We want to be able to get things right and listen to our citizens.”
The ballot measure was written and provided to the Council by representatives of Local 89 of the Laborers International Union of North America, one of San Diego County’s most politically influential labor organizations.
Many of the union’s construction worker members work on the kinds of large-scale development projects Chula Vista city councilmembers routinely vote on.
Speaking at Tuesday’s meeting, Kelvin Barrios, director of government affairs for LIUNA 89, as the union is known, said his members are seeking to overhaul Chula Vista’s government because the city needs leaders who are more representative of the city’s economic diversity.
By paying city councilmembers more and giving them more time in office, Barrios said, the city can attract a higher caliber of elected leadership and keep leaders long enough to shepherd complex development projects and other long-term initiatives.
“The city is good at reacting but not being proactive,” Barrios said.
“We want to attract qualified City Council candidates in the future.”
Councilmembers on Tuesday mostly brushed past discussing the ballot measure’s changes to their salaries and term limits.
They seemed more focused instead on ensuring the measure’s binding arbitration provision extends to all city employee unions, not just public safety unions.
An initial version of the measure applied the provision only to the city’s police and fire unions.
“Not many cities do binding arbitration [for all unions],” said Councilmember Cesar Fernandez.
“We need more clarity on that issue.”
Two influential county labor union leaders, Brigette Browning of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council and Crystal Irving of the Service Employees International Union, attended the meeting and asked councilmembers to extend the binding arbitration provision to all city unions.
“[Non-public safety] city employees feel like the bastard stepchild,” Browning said.
“City workers should be treated the same.”
Following Browning’s and Irving’s remarks, Councilmember Carolina Chavez voiced support for extending the arbitration provision and asked City Attorney Marco Verdugo to take steps toward adding the extension to the ballot measure.
“I want to be vocal about SEIU and ACE [the Association of Chula Vista Employees],” Chavez said, referring to the city’s two main non-public safety unions.
With the exception of Browning and Irving, all other speakers who addressed the Council about the ballot measure voiced skepticism or outright opposition.
“These changes were not presented to anyone, including the city’s Charter Review Commission,” said David Stucky, a retired city of San Diego employee who said he has lived in Chula Vista for 38 years.
“They potentially will lead to unforeseen consequences.”
“The ability of the current Council to vote on extending their own terms appears like a problem,” Stucky said.
Along with other speakers, Stucky said he feared the ballot measure was little more than a thinly disguised bid for influence by what he described as “a large and politically influential labor union.”
Since 2024, LIUNA 89 has spent more than $100,000 helping to elect the five-member Chula Vista City Council’s four-member Democratic majority according to campaign filings.
The union also spent more than $30,000 against McCann in his unsuccessful bid last year for a seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
So far this year, a LIUNA political action committee has spent more than $80,000 in support of Chula Vista Elementary School District Trustee Francisco Tamayo, who is seeking to unseat McCann in November.
McCann on Tuesday said he was especially concerned about his Democratic colleagues’ seeming rush to place the government overhaul ballot measure on the November ballot.
LIUNA representatives drafted and sent the ballot measure to city councilmembers four weeks ago, on June 16.
Since then, the city has held no public discussions or taken other steps to solicit public feedback.
McCann pointed out that other city-sponsored ballot measures have gone before voters only after months of development, fine-tuning and public outreach.
The current measure, he said, appears to skirt that process, including the city’s customary method of vetting changes to the city’s charter via a citizen-led Charter Review Commission.
“All these items [in the ballot measure] are getting lumped together with the kitchen sink,” McCann said.
“We need citizens to vet this.”
McCann, whose own salary would not rise immediately if the ballot measure passed, expressed astonishment that the measure would award councilmembers a six-figure salary for what he said amounts to a part-time job.
McCann made a series of motions seeking to slow down the advance of the measure and refer it to one or more of the city’s citizen-led review commissions.
The motions died after none of the other councilmembers moved to support them.
City Councilmember Cesar Fernandez said he too supports the idea of soliciting more public input, including via the city’s Charter Review Commission.
But he also voiced urgency about overhauling Chula Vista’s government to catch up to the city’s current fast-paced growth.
“This is a medium-to-large city with complex, multi-tiered projects that take 12 years to complete,” Fernandez said.
He cited a trolley line crossing project he’s currently working on that likely will outlast his time on the City Council.
“This feels like a full-time job,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez said he struggles to balance his city responsibilities with his other job as a teacher in the Sweetwater Union High School District.
“[I’m] locked down from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.,” he said.
“[Serving as a city councilmember] should be compensated at a level accessible…to nurses or librarians who can’t quit their job,” Fernandez said.
“This is about improving the representation here and making these offices accessible to working class people.”
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