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Canfield city approves police, city employee contracts for 2015
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
Canfield city officials have unanimously approved city employee and police department contracts for 2015.
Both contracts were approved 5-0 at the city’s last council meeting of the year.
City council approved a one-year contract with its police department. Canfield Police Chief Chuck Colucci said the reason it’s not a three-year deal is “because of the uncertainty of health care costs.” The deal includes 1.5 percent pay raises and keeps the health care contribution of employees at 12 percent, which was the same in 2014. Colucci said he hopes to “renegotiate in the fall [of 2015] for a new three-year deal.”
City Manager Joe Warino said the police contract mirrors the city contract for employees, in terms of the same raise and same circumstance on the health care costs. “The police were given an additional holiday in the contract,” Warino said. He said instead of city employees’ getting another holiday, they received a personal day to use at their discretion.
Colucci said the average salary of a patrol officer is about $53,000 — the department has 16 full-time officers, including the chief, and four part-time officers — and the average for dispatch workers is about $40,000. The department has five full-time dispatch workers and one part-time employee.
Warino highlighted another change in the police contract: “We eliminated the juvenile officer classification because we hadn’t had an officer in that capacity [in a few years] and a school resource officer fills in that capacity.”
The following salaries and positions were approved for the city: $77,155 for the city manager, police chief and director of finance; $65,000 for the service director; $63,353 for the zoning inspector; and $63,682 for the information technology manager.