Police Approve Wage Contract With Anaheim : Unions: The overwhelming vote to accept a 6.75% increase over two years signals an end to 19 months of acrimonious negotiations. Ill feelings linger.

Police officers, enmeshed in an angry and protracted wage dispute with the city, have grudgingly voted to accept a new contract that will mean a 6.75% raise for more than 300 officers at the county’s third biggest department, the union said Saturday.

Nineteen months into the impasse, officers approved the contract by a vote of 268 to 33. But a union official said the overwhelming margin was more a reflection of exasperation than satisfaction.

“The contract was accepted, reluctantly accepted,” Anaheim Police Assn. President Bruce Bottolfson said after tallying votes collected earlier in the week.

“We fought so hard for this damn thing, but it’s gotten to the point that we’re obviously not getting any farther with the city, so it’s basically, ‘take the money and run.’ ” Bottolfson said. “We realized we couldn’t squeeze any more out of the lemon.”

Working without a contract since July, 1992, many Anaheim officers grew increasingly bitter during contract negotiations, as they picketed at City Hall and Disneyland, staged a 24-hour “blue flu” sickout, and traded angry barbs with city officials. One officer even intentionally ticketed Mayor Tom Daly’s car for expired vehicle tags.

In the end, the dispute came down to wages.

The officers’ union complained that they had not had a raise since mid-1991 and ranked only 18th out of 20 Orange County cities in police salaries--even though Anaheim’s 352 officers make it third in size in the county, behind only the Sheriff’s Department and Santa Ana police. Anaheim police salaries range from $2,804 to $4,040 a month.

The officers wanted a 10% raise over two years, but city officials said Anaheim’s financial problems--it is expecting an $8-million shortfall for the coming fiscal year--made that virtually impossible. The city ultimately bumped its final offer earlier this month by 0.25%, proposing a 6.75% raise spread over two years. That was the proposal accepted on Saturday.

The approved package also includes an immediate bonus of $1,000 for each officer--above the $750 initially offered by the city--and increased medical benefits for police retirees.

“That’s great, it really is,” City Manager James D. Ruth said when told Saturday about the outcome of the union vote. “It’s a significant accomplishment for everybody, and I think everybody feels good about the settlement.”

Ruth said the resolution of the police dispute also should enable the city to speed talks with three other municipal unions that are negotiating contracts.

“This was obviously the most contentious one, the most difficult because the negotiations have been so prolonged,” he said. “Now that it’s resolved, I think it’ll help to be able to focus on these other (employee) groups.”

Many of the police officers, Ruth acknowledged, “aren’t happy, and that’s unfortunate, but it’s the best we can do. . . . We recognize that we’ve fallen behind in base pay, and we’re trying to bridge that gap, but how do you bridge the gap when you’re operating at a deficit?”

Officials on both sides of the bargaining table said that the months of gridlock in the dispute--and the protests that accompanied it--put a serious strain on police-city relations.

“It’s in everybody’s best interests to move on,” Ruth said. “I can put all this behind me, but frankly, I think those guys’ actions have been really unprofessional and illegal. . . . Public employees aren’t allowed to strike and everybody knows that.”

At the police association, Bottolfson said the officers’ bitter experience over the past 19 months will prompt them to become more involved in city politics. That process began in earnest Saturday, as union officials interviewed five candidates vying for open council seats.

The police protests served to pull union members together, but they did little in ending the contract dispute, he said. “It didn’t do a lot for us. Realistically, it made us realize that we’ve got to do more politically. . . . We’ll be out walking the precincts.”

Bottolfson was particularly critical of Mayor Daly, who recently began meeting privately with the union president to seek an end to the impasse.

“I honestly believe he didn’t play any role” in the resolution, Bottolfson said. “All he did was get our expectations up.

Daly could not be reached for comment Saturday.