Police, city staff to take furloughs

Costa Mesa’s City Council approved a plan Tuesday to put its employees on mandatory furloughs in order to save $3 million over the next year and finalized a program to enhance employee retirement benefits.

The city hopes that by offering employees two extra years of credit toward retirement it can entice enough employees to leave before the end of the year that it can stave off layoffs.

Police officers and city staffers will be asked to take 104 hours of unpaid time off between this month and August of next year, which means a 5% cut in pay. The agreement also suspends contributions by the city and the employees to a retirement health-care savings account.

“We have made a huge step in getting our budget balanced,” said Councilman Gary Monahan.

Council approved the measures, 4 to 1, with Councilman Eric Bever voting against it. He objected to the furloughs.

“The staff members should have just agreed to take a 5% pay reduction and kept coming to work every day,” Bever said.

The new agreements were hashed out in months of negotiations among the city’s police, firefighters and miscellaneous staffers and the bargaining unit representing the city. They were brought on by a projected budget deficit of almost $20 million that the city faced because of steeply declining sales tax revenues as people shied away from buying cars, clothes and other items at the city’s retailers.

Both contract amendments are temporary, expiring August of next year, at which point the contracts between the employee unions and the city will expire and the parties will return to the negotiating table.

The agreements don’t include a few elements originally sought by the council. A cap on overtime, for instance, is not built into the contracts for police or staff members, but Budget and Research Officer Bobby Young says that the departments are still going to internally try to cut down on overtime.

Administrative Services Director Stephen Mandoki said that the city is still on target to save as much money as it intended to save going into the process.

The city’s firefighters do not yet have an official, finalized agreement. Discussions between the fire union and the city have been more complicated than negotiations with the other unions, according to fire union President Tim Vasin, but an agreement is expected shortly.

Union and city officials have tentatively agreed upon a trade off where the fire department will staff fewer firefighters in exchange for more lucrative retirement benefits.