POLICEPAY is in the process of modifying the curriculum for our seminars to reflect the recent decline in the national economy. After six years of being on the offense, we must switch to defense. We are also adding projections and forecasts to our ability-to-pay study. A different economy requires a different approach. Next week, we will publish a special edition of the POLICEPAY Journal. We tell you all about the up coming changes. Be sure to read it.
Ron York
Mesa Police Chief George Gascón informed his agency's roughly 1,500 employees via video and e-mail that the ongoing efforts to slash the city budget will translate to a $7.6 million cut for the police department up to the rest of this fiscal year, which ends in June. And it doesn't get better for the next fiscal year, with another $15 million in projected cuts.
Mesa could lose 346 positions
In an e-mail sent to employees Wednesday, Gascón alluded to the broader economic crisis facing the nation and Mesa. Gascón chalked out a bullet point-style list of proposed ideas that he'll likely share with the Mesa City Council in an upcoming study session.
These include reduction of the patrol vehicle fleet by 25 patrol cars and retiring 16 police motorcycles, eliminating 19 vacant sworn officer positions and nine civilian positions, which include seven vacancies and two layoffs.
Sixteen open sworn positions and 26 open civilian positions will be frozen.
There will be a hiring freeze of all sworn positions "until projected financial savings are reached between FY08/09 and FY 09/10," Gascón stated in the e-mail.
Another proposal is to privatize municipal security. That would cut about 25 filled personnel positions, if approved. These are employees who handle security in city buildings.
There also will be a freeze on the purchase of new vehicles in the next fiscal year.
Aviation flight hours could be reduced to five hours per shift.
Equipment, including laptop computers and handheld radios, will have to be shared by officers.
Gascón has an operating budget of $162 million this fiscal year, but the proposed revised budget for this year is down to $157 million. In January, Gascón had announced plans to cut $7.2 million by December 2008.
Sgt. Bryan Soller, president of the Mesa Fraternal Order of Police, a police union, said Thursday he was concerned about the hiring freeze.
"It's a sad day for Mesa that we even have to get on this road," Soller said. "Then it goes to officer safety issues and we'll be shorthanded."
Soller said he agrees with Gascón's proposal to "decentralize SWAT and traffic units and do part-time patrol duty."
Mesa police spokesman Sgt. Ed Wessing said Gascón believes it's better, for instance, to have traffic units at each district versus having a traffic unit in one area of the city.
"That way, the division commander of the district would deploy them based on the needs of the district," Wessing said. They will be performing the same functions, Wessing added.
But Fabian Cota, president of the Mesa Police Association, said via e-mail, "Both Traffic and the full-time SWAT team, will have their effectiveness impacted negatively as they are scheduled to be farmed out to patrol districts to assist with patrol duties. This will impact their ability to focus 100% on traffic safety and DUI enforcement."
Cota has been firm about raising the idea of imposing a secondary property tax to finance public safety projects. It's something he's been discussing with the City Council.
"If the economy improves and sales tax revenues go up for next fiscal year and we levy a secondary property tax, that would allow us some money to staff new buildings and have adequate personnel," Cota said.
The Urban County Council on Tuesday deadlocked on a resolution over whether the council should approve the city's collective bargaining contracts with police, fire and community corrections.
But Mayor Jim Newberry broke the council's 7-7 tie by voting in favor of council approval on collective bargaining contracts.
Newberry's tie-breaking vote did not come as a surprise since he had asked for council approval on the latest police contract two months ago. At the time, the council said it would not approve the contract because it had not been involved in the negotiations.
The resolution still requires two official council readings for final approval. That could come on Dec. 4.
The council needs to review the collective bargaining contracts as part of its council duties, said Councilman Ed Lane, who introduced the resolution. "The fact that we are not reviewing and approving these matters are not in the best interest of the taxpayers or of our government."
City negotiations on two additional police and fire contracts should be completed in the next few months.
Councilwoman K.C. Crosbie said she was opposed to the idea because the enabling state legislation states the mayor or his designee negotiates and approves the contract.
"If you are going to have 15 people look at the contract, I think that is a recipe for disaster," Crosbie said.
The Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Fire Fighters are both opposed to council approval of the collective bargaining contracts.
"You can't get 15 people to agree on anything," said Chris Bartley, president of the local International Association of Fire Fighters 526. "It's going to be even harder to get a contract approved."
Some Cape Coral police officers voted to continue contract negotiations for pay raises although city officials have rejected every union offer so far.
The vote by about 100 members of the union at a meeting Tuesday night was unanimous, said Detective Kurt Grau, president of the local union that represents 230 lieutenants, sergeants and officers.
Their three-year contracts expired Sept. 30, and union representatives have been negotiating for new agreements. Grau said that city officials have rejected proposals for a 4 percent cost-of-living adjustment and lesser amounts. Officers through lieutenants received raises ranging from 2 to 3 percent during the past three years, Grau said.
He said the membership Tuesday voted to lobby City Council members individually during the next two weeks to persuade them to agree to a raise.
"I think they're hoping that something can be worked out," Grau said. "We're trying to avoid a battle by declaring an impasse."
However, many City Council members don't want to budge. They've already imposed wage freezes for the city's nonunion employees.
"The union will be coming to the wrong place if they're going to try and lobby me," Cape Councilman Bill Deile said. "I don't see where the money is going to come from. The city manager took $8 million out of reserves to help fund this year's budget, and property values are going to decrease again next year."
The city may be facing layoffs next year because there may be a $10 million shortfall, Councilman Tim Day said.
"So how can I look at raises when I'm worrying about laying people off?" he said.
Day, who is the director of the Southwest Florida Criminal Justice Academy and the Fort Myers Fire Academy, said he's sympathetic to the needs of police officers.
"But we're in a dire financial situation," he said. "The only other option is to impose another tax or fee on citizens."
However, Grau said police officers are also in a financial bind.
"They need to pay their bills. Some of our members have had their houses foreclosed on," he said.
Current pay for police officers ranges from $43,992 to $64,085 a year. Had the city gone along with their initial cost-of-living adjustment, a 4 percent raise would have increased their pay from $45,752 to $66,648 a year.
Sergeants earn from $61,672 to $77,189 annually. A 4-percent raise would increase the pay range from $64,139 to $80,277 a year.
Lieutenants are paid from $73,195 to $89,066 annually. A 4 percent raise would give them an increase ranging from $76,123 to $92,629 a year.
The police union has voted to accept a new two-year contract with the town and is now waiting for the agreement to go before the Representative Town Meeting in December, officials said.
The Silver Shield Association, comprising 149 officers up to the rank of lieutenant, voted in favor of the contract at the end of October. The new contract would result in moderate increases to their salaries and greater contributions to health benefits.
According to the collective bargaining agreement between the town and the union, which is posted on the towns' Web site, officers will see an annual wage rate increase of 3.75 percent.
Officers also will be required to pay more toward their medical benefits, including $10 more for their medical co-pays, according to the agreement.
Sgt. James Bonney, president of the union, said the vote was nearly unanimous.
"People were pretty positive," said Bonney, who noted that the contract's short length made members more agreeable to it.
"I think they understand that we are going to be picking new negotiators and start new negotiations next October," said Bonney.
Bonney said he believed the town would be proposing more sweeping changes to officers' schedules in the next contract. In March, union members planned to ask for wage increases in return for possibly working more hours a week and rearranging their schedules to cut down on the need for overtime. However, Bonney said that idea was taken off the table early on in the negotiation process.
Officers in the Silver Shield Association are working under their previous contract, which expired in June, until the RTM ratifies a new one.
The new contract was on the agenda for the RTM in October; however, Bonney said it was moved off the list. He expects it to be addressed at the December meeting.
Officers in the union will receive retroactive pay from July 1, 2008, when the contract is signed and implemented, Bonney said.
Last month, Bonney said the contract was an improvement from the prior four-year contract that was signed in 2004, but that it was not a home run for union members. Representatives from both sides of the bargaining table said this year's negotiations were much more cordial than in years past, he said.
Bonney said the department has typically been held to 3 or 4 percent wage increases, but hopes to eventually raise that number in future negotiations in order for officers to be better aligned with neighboring departments.
According to Bonney, two officers who were on the force for several years recently left to go to other departments in Meriden and the state police as a result of the high costs of living in the area.
Fearing the depth of Orange's budget crisis, a majority of the city council voted to reject a negotiated $585,000 wage increase with the municipal firefighters' union, and a new police labor pact with retroactive pay.
In the wake of the council rejecting those agreements Tuesday, representatives of Orange Police Superior Officers Association Local 89 and Firefighters Mutual Benevolent Association Local 10 are checking with their respective lawyers, according to officials.
"We did seek legal advice the next day," firefighter Elvin Padilla, president of that bargaining unit, said today.
Padilla's comments came a day after the council meeting drew residents and business owners, many of whom complained about the introduced municipal budget calling for an 18.6 percent hike in taxes. The session that began Monday night did not end until 12:45 a.m. Tuesday.
"We're going to leave it in the hands of the lawyers," Padilla, referring to the council's rejection of a $585,000 emergency temporary appropriation, said today. The money is needed for the city to fulfill a negotiated wage increase it made with the city firefighters' union.
"We're a little disappointed," Padilla said of the council's reneging on the agreement.
The union's attorney may end up talking with the municipality about agreeing to fund the rejected labor pact, once the council resolves its 2008-09 budget crisis, Padilla said.
Mayor Eldridge Hawkins Jr.'s $57 million budget, introduced by the council on Sept. 16, calls for a $35.9 million municipal levy -- $5.6 million more than last year's $30.3 million. It would mean a $904 increase in municipal taxes for the owner of a home assessed at the city's average of $246,700.
The city also is dealing with a $1.6 million increase in municipal indebtedness, and a 11.5 percent or $595,000 drop in anticipated revenues. The budget proposal has been under ongoing scrutiny by council members and the Orange Citizens Budget Advisory Committee, a 14-member group of volunteers.
Councilman Elroy Corbitt, in arguing against the wage pact approvals, said the panel should not okay anything that might further bring hardship to taxpayers.
"We're under a tremendous amount of pressure to get the budget under control," Corbitt told the public and his colleagues earlier this week. "The timing is bad now."
Because the city already has negotiated a wage increase with the firefighters, Councilman Edward Marable said, the council has "an obligation to fund it."
The rejected labor pact with the police superior officers' union is a three-year settlement that retroactively runs from Jan. 1 this year through Dec. 31, 2011. No dollar amount was attached to that recommended memorandum of agreement between the city and the police union.
But the measure calls for across-the-board raises for sergeants, lieutenants and captains -- 4 percent annually for four years.
The same recommended pact also calls for a so-called "four-on, four-off" work schedule, retroactive to June 1. It suggests superior officers work 10.75 hour days, for four consecutive days, followed by four consecutive days off.