VENTURA COUNTY NEWS : City Expected to Reject 4% Raises for Police : Salary: Hundreds turn out in support of Santa Paula force, urging officials to continue talks. Council was due to vote on 2% hike without retroactive pay.

About 200 supporters of the city’s police force urged the City Council on Tuesday to continue negotiations with officers to give them their first pay raise in two years, along with retroactive salary.

Additionally, Chamber of Commerce officials and several business owners spoke out in favor of the force, which has been working without a contract since 1997.

“There must be something wrong,” said John Macik, vice president of Santa Paula Chevrolet. “You can’t hear this loud voice from 100% of the community telling you what they want you to do. I’m embarrassed for you.”

The council was presented a petition with nearly 1,000 signatures in favor of higher police salaries.

The department’s 29 officers and seven dispatchers have asked for a 4% raise retroactive to the end of the last contract.

But the council said the best it could do is grant the department a 2% raise for the next 12 months--a matter it was scheduled to vote on late Tuesday.

“The money’s at City Hall. You can’t kid us,” said Richard Garcia, president of the Downtown Merchants Assn. “We’re tired of all of this.”

“Where’s our money going to?” asked resident Lynda Lee Lloyd. “We should get somebody in there to check our books.”

To accommodate the overflow crowd, the meeting was moved from council chambers at City Hall to the Santa Paula Community Center.

With salaries ranging from $34,126.56 to $41,480.92, police officers in Santa Paula earn an average of 35% less than their counterparts elsewhere in the county in terms of salaries and benefits, union officials say.

In addition, the city has not increased the number of officers on the force since 1974, although Santa Paula’s population has grown by nearly 50% since then, to 27,000.

“How are we supposed to attract and retain the most qualified officers?” asked Sgt. Gary Marshall, president of the officers union, before the meeting.

Tensions have escalated over the issue throughout the city, which has been struggling to stretch its property tax revenues and below-average sales tax base.

Assistant City Manager Julie Hernandez told senior citizens groups that police raises beyond 2% could bring cuts in senior services. And at least one city department head warned his employees that pay raises for police could lead to reduced funding in their department.

In those cases, city officials say they were only trying to inform those who might be affected; they deny orchestrating an anti-police campaign, as union leaders charge.

“It’s a transparent attempt to turn everyone against the Police Department,” Marshall said.

Some union members say that within its $17.25-million budget, the city always manages to come up with funds for projects it decides are important.

For example, the city recently agreed to spend $10,000 on a private civil rights lawyer to review voting patterns to determine whether officials could fight a federal attempt to change the city’s elections system. Such a change could mean the unseating of some council members.

The police officers union dropped its affiliation with the Police Officers Research Assn. of California last week and is now affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, hoping that a more powerful union will be more effective in negotiations with the city.

That union, which is connected to the AFL-CIO, represents 40,000 officers, mainly on the East Coast. In California, it represents the Hanford Police Department and police officers at several military sites, including Port Hueneme and Point Mugu.

Bill Davis, a spokesman for the union, said it reviewed city budget numbers and determined that Santa Paula Police Department salaries actually decreased by 4% in recent years, while salaries for general administration have increased by as much as 70% in the same period.

A city official said such an analysis suggests the numbers were taken out of context.