ANAHEIM : Police Union Again Pickets City Council

The city’s police union Tuesday picketed a City Council meeting for the second time this month, demanding that the council grant its members a 10% raise and increase the size of the police force.

About 400 members of the Anaheim Police Assn. and their supporters marched from 4 to 5:15 p.m. outside City Hall along Anaheim Boulevard.

The union has been working without a contract since July, 1992, and has not had a raise since July, 1991. The union earlier rejected a city offer of a 3% raise this fiscal year and a 3% raise in fiscal 1994. It wants a 5% raise in this fiscal year and a 5% raise in the next.

The city says it faces an $8-million deficit next year and cannot afford the $2.5 million annually a 10% raise would cost or the $8.8 million annually 100 more officers would cost. The annual city budget is about $150 million.

“We were told by the council three weeks ago we would get some answers, but so far there has been no change at all in their position,” union President Bruce Bottolfson said.

Inside, the council postponed discussion of a proposal to divert about $2.5 million from the city’s hotel bed tax to the department and another to do away with the city’s $500,000 school-crossing-guard program. That money would also go to bolster the department.

Bottolfson, a detective, has been pushing the council to impose an admission tax of up to $1 on all Disneyland, concert, Angels, Rams and Mighty Ducks tickets that cost more than $10. He estimates such a tax would bring in more than $12 million annually and allow the city to give his members a raise and increase the 350-member force by 100 officers.

“We are going to put that on the back burner for now,” Bottolfson said. “Right now, we want the bed tax.”

Disney, which has twice before squashed admission tax efforts by the city or others, has vowed to do so again if it gets on the ballot. It has also threatened to reconsider its planned $3-billion expansion of Disneyland if an admission tax is imposed.