Police contract heads to binding arbitration

City council unanimously endorsed the contract.

By DAVID SKOLNICK

CITY HALL REPORTER

YOUNGSTOWN — With the city’s police patrol officers union’s rejection of a fact finder’s recommendations on a new contract, the two sides are heading to binding arbitration.

But Mayor Jay Williams and Edward Colon, president of the police union, said they are also interested in the two sides’ resuming negotiations to resolve the matter while they wait to appoint an arbitrator.

The 117-member union rejected the fact finder’s recommendations, said Colon, who declined to give the vote total except to say it was “overwhelmingly no.”

The report from fact finder Michael Paolucci of Cincinnati addressed 26 unresolved issues, including salary, health-care contributions, residency, sick leave, retirement and severance, discipline and employee parking.

The fact finder sided with the city on most of the issues.

The Youngstown Police Association’s bargaining team didn’t offer a recommendation to the general membership about the report before the vote, Colon said. Instead, the report was distributed to the members, who read it and then voted no, he said.

When asked what the membership specifically objected to in the report, Colon said that health care was a big concern but that there were plenty of other issues.

Council endorsement

The union counted the votes Tuesday. On Wednesday, city council unanimously endorsed the contract. The city administration had urged the contract be recommended.

“We believe it is very reasonable,” Williams said.

Unlike the fact-finder report, arbitration is binding.

It probably will take a couple of months before arbitration begins, Colon said.

The patrol officer’s union has worked without a contract since Nov. 30, 2006.

The city offered annual pay raises of 1.5 percent for three years. The union wanted 4.5-percent annual raises.

Paolucci recommended the union receive a 3-percent raise, retroactive to Dec. 1, 2006; then a 4.5-percent raise in the contract’s second year; and 3 percent in the final year. That’s the same pay raises the city gave its ranking officers union in June.

The city wanted to increase the patrol officers’ health-insurance premium contribution from 7 percent to 10 percent. The premiums have monthly caps the city wanted to raise significantly higher than the current limits. The union wanted a minor cap increase.

skolnick@vindy.com