Santa Ana’s City Council Imposes Police Pay Raise

The Santa Ana City Council put an end to a year of fruitless negotiations with the city’s police union Monday and unilaterally imposed a one-year, 4.5% raise, retroactive to July 1, 1987.

Coincidentally Monday, more than 300 Santa Ana residents jammed City Hall to protest what they said is the city’s poor treatment of its police officers and disregard for legitimate public safety concerns.

The rally, sponsored by members of several local groups who call themselves Friends of the PBA (for Santa Ana Police Benevolent Assn.), had been planned for weeks.

Negotiators for the city and police officers last met in January. The PBA, maintaining that its officers should be the highest paid in the county, asked for a wage increase of 7.5% for officers in both this fiscal year and next. The city offered raises of 4.5% this year and 5% in fiscal year 1988-89, plus an extra 2% increase for sergeants retroactive to Jan. 1 and another 2% raise next fiscal year. The city’s offer also included upgraded benefits.

Letter to Police Negotiators

Last week, city labor negotiator Charles M. Goldstein delivered a letter to PBA negotiators, stating that city management considered the talks at an impasse and would ask the City Council to unilaterally resolve the dispute by approving the first year of the city’s two-year contract offer.

The council voted 4 to 3 to adopt the 4.5% offer and hope for better negotiating results in the coming year.

“It’s just part of the process,” Mayor Dan Young said. “We’ve been negotiating for a year and a half, and the impasse proceedings had been concluded. . . . We’ll start negotiating on next fiscal year.”

Council Member Dan Griset, who voted with the majority, said he hopes that negotiations for 1988-89 will turn out better. “I’m an optimist, and I think that responsible compensation negotiations can succeed,” he said. “I think that the entire setting is more conducive (this year).”

Council members John Acosta, Ron May and Miguel A. Pulido opposed the resolution granting the raise.

“I don’t believe that’s the way you settle labor issues,” May said. “You go back and forth, and each side gives a little. That hasn’t been going on here, to Ron May’s satisfaction.”

‘Sides Weren’t That Far Apart’

Acosta, who plans to run against Young for mayor this year, said he was “embarrassed . . . to be part of a council that imposes a contract on our police. I could negotiate a contract that would be satisfactory to the police officers and not detrimental to the city. The two sides weren’t that far apart.”

PBA president Sgt. Donald Blankenship said the union’s wage team will meet Thursday to discuss its options. He said those include challenging the city’s assertion that impasse procedures had been exhausted, and he did not rule out the possibility of a strike.

“(Striking) will be considered,” he said. “We always hold it out to the membership as a possibility.”

Blankenship said, however, that the likelihood of such an action was small.

“After (council members) see the support we have among the citizens (Monday night), they’re going to realize they’re not just at impasse with us, but with the whole city,” he said.

Residents began milling outside City Hall about 6 p.m., holding up signs calling for the recall of Young, Griset, Wilson B. Hart and Vice Mayor Patricia A. McGuigan.

“They continue to ignore the concerns of the people,” said John Raya, a COP (Community Oriented Policing) block captain and one of the rally organizers.

“What they did today is nothing new--that’s what they offered before. . . . We want to see a plan implemented by this council that will bring response times down to a five-minute standard.”

Priscilla Holmberg, a 40-year Santa Ana resident whose Winnebago was headquarters for the rally in the Civic Center parking lot, said the city needed more police, not fewer, as foreseen in a preliminary budget proposal submitted by Chief Clyde Cronkhite two weeks ago.

“I live behind bars and three security doors,” Holmberg said. “It’s a dubious distinction for Santa Ana to be the crime capital of Orange County.”