NEWPORT BEACH : State Will Mediate in Police-City Talks

Police Department employees and city officials will enter mediation tonight with the hope of breaking a seven-month deadlock in contract negotiations.

The non-binding mediation conducted by a state official marks the first time in city history that outside help has been called in to resolve a labor issue. The two sides have not talked since late December, when police employees’ associations declared an impasse.

“The mediator’s sole function is to get us talking again,” said Steve Van Horn, who will be representing police personnel during the talks. “Frustration is a good part of this problem . . . and a lot will be determined” by this mediation.

Negotiators for Police Department employees, once frustrated, are now angry about having worked for seven months without a labor contract, Van Horn said.

“We go into the mediation with an open mind,” he said. “But I don’t know how optimistic we are.”

If mediation fails and issues go unresolved into the spring, said Tom Tolman, president of the Newport Beach Police Employees Assn., there may be job actions ranging from publicizing the employees’ plight to work slowdowns, and even a strike.

“I would hate to see it get to that point,” Tolman said. “ And I don’t know that it will, but there are certainly a lot of guys at work who talk about it.”

Tolman’s group represents the department’s patrol officers.

The city and its Police Department employees have been stalemated over a number of issues. The most critical is the interpretation of the city’s labor policy amended in 1978 to guarantee that police employees will be among the top three highest paid in the county.

The policy has a wide loophole. City officials can cite “budget considerations” in not granting a raise. Facing a projected $6-million shortfall in next year’s budget, the city’s chief negotiator Duane Munson said they have done just that.

The stakes are high for the financially troubled city because any pay raise for the police presumably must be offered to all of the city’s approximately 750 employees, city officials said.

Each year the city negotiates contracts with its six employee associations representing everybody from police to clerical to blue-collar workers. City officials have been telling employees not to expect a raise for the 1992-93 fiscal year and to brace for layoffs.

Police negotiators insist that the city has the general fund reserve to pay for a salary increase.

“Nobody wants to fight over this, but we are locked up on some issues,” Munson said. The city has to cut millions from its budget and has been considering layoffs to make up the shortfall, he said.