ANAHEIM : Police Union Plans Protest at City Hall

Members of the city’s police union say they will picket tonight’s City Council meeting because they have been working without a labor contract for 15 months.

Bruce Bottolfson, president of the Anaheim Police Assn., said that more than 600 off-duty officers and their supporters are expected to march in front of City Hall to demand a raise for the officers and a larger Police Department.

The city’s 340 police officers have not had a raise since July, 1991, and have been working without a contract since July 1, 1992. Negotiations were declared at an impasse last January. The city has only 10 more police officers than it did in 1983.

Bottolfson, a detective in the hotel-motel crime bureau, said the association has been asking for a 10% raise spread over three years, while the city has offered a 6.5% raise over three years.

Bottolfson said the council and staff spend more time and effort on building projects and the proposed Disneyland expansion than they do on solving the contract stalemate.

“Maybe the citizens of this community need to know what the council’s priorities are,” Bottolfson said.

He said a recent survey showed that among the county’s 20 police departments, Anaheim’s officers rank 18th in salaries. “We’re just trying to catch up with the other cities in Orange County,” he said.

“Frankly, we are falling behind the other cities,” City Manager James D. Ruth said but added that the city has severe financial problems and cannot afford the union’s demands. He said the city has cut its spending by $34 million in the past two years while sparing both the police and fire departments from the cuts. If nothing changes, the city will have an $8-million budget deficit next year, he said.

“We would like to pay all of our employees more, but if we did that we would have to cut services even more,” Ruth said.

Bottolfson said the $2.5 million it would cost annually to implement a 10% raise could be funded by reinstating the 2% utility users tax, which the council allowed to lapse last week. The tax raised $8 million annually for the city.

Ruth, who was angered when the council voted last June to let the tax expire, said it is up to the council to decide whether to reinstate the tax.

Mayor Tom Daly said he wants to speak to Bottolfson before responding to any of his criticisms or proposals.

Bottolfson said the union is pushing for more officers because they are needed.

“Anaheim is not the Anaheim it was 10 years ago,” Bottolfson said. “It used to be a good place to go, a good place to live. But just this weekend we had one homicide, two or three shootings and a drive-by shooting where nobody got hit. That is Anaheim today.”

The picketing will not be the first time the association has taken its case to the public.

In May, the association took out newspaper ads to plead directly to residents and ask them to write to city officials. It also sent flyers to other police associations, telling would-be applicants considering openings in Anaheim that they would probably be better off staying put.

The council meeting begins at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 200 S. Anaheim Blvd.