PORT HUENEME : Council OKs Police Contract, Plan Study

The Port Hueneme City Council has signed a three-year pact with its police union and approved a $262,000 consulting contract to update the city’s General Plan.

The contract with the 27-member police union calls for annual raises of 3% to 5.5% and lowers the retirement age for police officers from 55 to 50. The officers’ raises were lower than those of the union’s office employees in exchange for the sweetened retirement benefits.

“The retirement package was what we were most interested in,” said Officer Ken Dobbe, president of the Port Hueneme Police Officers Assn., which ratified the contract on Dec. 31. “Now that we’ve got a better retirement system, it may be a drawing card for recruitment.”

The city’s police officers are the lowest-paid in the county, said City Manager Richard Velthoen, noting that the department was the only one without retirement at age 50. “If we are to retain them, we have to pay semi-competitive salaries.”

Also Wednesday, the council gave the contract for the General Plan update to Cotton/Beland Associates Inc., a Pasadena planning firm. Dale Beland, one of the partners, was the project manager for another firm during the last rewriting of Port Hueneme’s General Plan, in 1977.

“It needs to be done because it no longer relates to existing state law,” Velthoen said of the plan, which governs future development. “It’s obsolete in terms of meeting state requirements.”