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Campbell, police finalize pact with smaller raise
By jeanne starmack
campbell
The city and police have finalized a revised contract that includes a raise, but not as big as the raise in the first version.
The deal also reduces the annual cost to the city.
Under the newest contract, which the city council passed at its April 20 meeting, six officers hired after 2005 will get a 25-cents-an-hour raise.
The other six officers, with greater seniority, will get no raise.
In the first version of the three-year contract, which was signed July 27 and retroactive to July 1 after being negotiated by former Mayor George Krinos, the six hired after 2005 got a $1-an-hour raise to bring them to parity with the department’s other six full-time officers. The raise was ordered by a state mediator.
But city council said it was shut out of negotiations, and Krinos should have invited a council member in to represent its interests when issues that would cost the city money were being discussed.
Council also contested a portion of the contract that took away its right to determine staffing levels in the police department and gave that right to the mayor. Council pointed out the city’s home-rule charter gives it that right. Council sued the Fraternal Order of Police in court.
When Krinos abruptly resigned mid-term in January, new Mayor William VanSuch began negotiating with the police again.
VanSuch brought in the law firm Clemans-Nelson & Associates of Akron, which specializes in contract negotiations and labor issues. The city had been using the firm in negotiations, but Krinos did not do so. He said he wanted to save the city money by negotiating himself.
Mike Esposito of Clemans-Nelson said this week that Krinos had negotiated an additional 25-cent-an-hour raise for all 12 officers in the department. Esposito also explained that the mediator erred by allowing that cost to the city to start in the same year that he’d negotiated a contract, which is improper under the Ohio Revised Code.
“He did that and it was on appeal, and it would have cost another $50,000 [in court costs],” said Esposito.
Krinos later got the union to agree not to take the $1-an-hour raise for the six officers until Jan. 1 by negotiating a 25-cents-an-hour raise for all 12 officers after that date.
“He got them to move it but they all have a quarter an hour the following year,” Esposito said.
Esposito said the contract Krinos negotiated would cost the city $65,645 over the life of the pact and $24,615 a year afterward.
He said the new contract will cost the city $17,400 over its life and $6,150 every year afterward.
Police wages under the previous contract ranged between $30,080 and $40,045.
He said a state commission that oversees the city while it is in fiscal emergency status approved the raise.