Board Poised to OK Firefighters’ Contract

After nearly two years of intense negotiations, Ventura County supervisors on Tuesday are expected to ratify a contract with county firefighters.

The agreement would bring the salaries of captains, engineers and firefighters closer to those of their counterparts in nearby cities and counties, officials said.

Currently, captains earn $59,514, engineers make $51,290 and firefighters earn $44,208 annually, said Ventura County Fire Protection District accounting supervisor Tarsellia Oliver. The new contract would boost salaries by 5% this year and 3% annually for the next four years, she said.

Negotiations, which twice came to an impasse, began about two months before the contract for the Professional Firefighters’ Assn. was due to expire June 30, 1997.

A state negotiator was called in earlier this year, and the two sides hammered out a contract. It would order another pay increase if local salaries are not on par with those in six other cities and counties by June 2003.

“All along we wanted parity--we didn’t have any big problems with any of the working conditions,” Carroll Hoiness, a fire engineer and union president, said Friday.

“I think the contract is fair,” he continued. “We were losing people to other departments because of our pay scale. Ventura County was being used as a stepping stone to get to big cities and counties. This is going to stop all of that.”