DELAWARE – A typically uneventful Wilmington budget hearing saw some liveliness Thursday as several police officers sporting T-shirts saying “TREAT US FAIRLY” joined firefighters as City Council heard their departments’ spending plans for the next year.
Harold Bozeman, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, said union members showed up to remind city leaders about the failed talks to give police officers new contracts. Union members also said they would likea long-awaited cost-of-living pay increase.
“It’s kind of an ignored issue, the issue of our contract, and the issue of our cost-of-living increases,” he said. “It’s kind of been ignored by the past administration and the current administration.
“We’re here to be seen. We essentially want to bring this idea back to the forefront, maybe encourage the city to engage or re-engage in some negotiations for our contract.”
Bozeman and Bruce Schweiger, president of the Wilmington firefighter’s union, said police officrs and firefighters have worked without contracts since the summer of 2011.
Mayor Dennis P. Williams’ proposed $150 million budget includes $51.6 million for police and $19.8 million for fire. The figure is roughly $500,000 more than the current police budget and about $400,000 more than the current fire department budget.
Like all the departments in the city, however, police and fire will see no across-the-board raises for a sixth straight year.
Bozeman said contract talks with the city have failed, prompting the police union to call on the state’s Public Employees Relations Board to oversee negotiations. He said the union plans to go through mediation.
“If they find something that both sides are agreeable to, the contract gets voted and potentially ratified by the union, and we move forward,” Bozeman said. “If mediation is unsuccessful, then we go to arbitration. Then a state officer will look at both proposals and will have to choose one over the other.”
Schweiger said his union is not as far along with the contract talks as police, but hopes to begin negotiations in the next two weeks.
“With the new chief of staff, obviously this is going to delay us a little bit, but we’re looking forward to sitting down with the new chief of staff and mayor’s staff,” he said.
Schweiger said he supports the budget because it does not include layoffs for firefighters. But he said the fire department would still look for ways to provide a cost-of-living pay increase.
“A lot of us live in the city. With property tax and sewer and water going up, it’s got to be equaled out,” he said, “and unfortunately, we don’t see that. It drives a lot of our members to move out of the city once their time’s up, which is a sad thing.”
Councilman Bud Freel, chairman of the council committee leading the budget hearings, said he’s not involved at all in negotiations but hopes the city can ink new contracts for every city union member, not just police and fire, that includes cost of living increases.
“If the budget we pass does not have enough money to cover all those COLAs once they’ve been approved, we would need to do a budget amendment,” Freel said, “but right now, what we have in front of us, there’s no COLAs.”
Contact Yann Ranaivo at (302) 324-2837, yranaivo@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @YannRanaivo.