ANAHEIM : City, Firefighters Agree on Contract

The City Council and city firefighters reached agreement Friday on a new contract, ending months of bitter charges that enveloped the recent mayoral election.

Neither side disclosed details of the agreement, which won’t be signed until next week.

Firefighters were not seeking a direct pay raise in the new contract but instead wanted fringe benefits similar to those available to firefighters elsewhere in the county. The firefighters accepted the contract offer late Friday, after five months of operating without a contract.

“It was a very one-sided vote,” said Dennis Ivison, director of Anaheim Firefighters for Better Government, referring to the association’s nearly unanimous acceptance of the contract.

“The numbers aren’t really very different,” Ivison said, although he did not deny that a pay raise was included in the pact. He declined to say if the contract is for two years, as firefighters wanted, or the three-year version that city officials sought.

Councilman Irv Pickler, who lost a mayoral bid to Fred Hunter last month, had charged that a Hunter victory would result in a contract too favorable to the firefighters, at taxpayers’ expense.

Pickler could not be reached for comment on Friday.