By Leslie Parrilla
The Press Enterprise
CORONA, Calif. — What appeared to be impending layoffs for 15 Corona police officers will likely not happen following a vote Wednesday by a labor group.
The Corona Police Officers Association unanimously voted to accept an offer by the city that would save Corona $2.8 million and prevent the layoffs. The City Council is scheduled to take up the matter at a July 6 meeting.
The new offer would defer expected officer raises of 4 percent for two years and prevent the layoffs.
Previously, the city had agreed to give officers a 5 percent raise to begin this fiscal year and 4 percent next year. But it wanted to defer those increases, pushing negotiations to a sticking point.
The city then approved the raises but ordered layoff notices for 15 officers to recoup the savings.
Layoffs would have gone into effect today, but the notices are being postponed until the matter is taken up by the council, association President Jim Auck said.
The City Council decided to continue negotiations after layoff notices because it benefited both parties.
“I believe they felt it was in their best interest and to take the revised offer and keep those additional officers on the street,” Assistant City Manager Greg Irvine said.
Contentious negotiations left officers surprised last week when the city ordered 15 of the most recently hired patrol officers to be let go. The cut would have represented about 10 percent of the department’s 164 sworn officers and about 21 percent of the roughly 70 officers in the patrol division.
It would have been the largest layoff at the department in more than two decades.
City officials said the layoffs were the only option after labor negotiations stalled.
The city needed to cut roughly $4 million over three years to balance the city budget.
The new contract would save only $2.8 million, leaving officials to tackle an additional shortfall in future budgets, Irvine said Wednesday.
If approved, the new contract would also prevent the city from ordering layoffs without notifying the association in advance.
“We were not given the opportunity to bargain and negotiate for these officers’ positions. Now it will be required that they come talk to us, because if there is truly a financial need to lay off officers, I know our group will make concessions to keep those officers here,” Auck said.
Last week, firefighters had voted to create a fund to pay the officers’ salaries for a year.
Auck said the city was using layoff notices as leverage instead of as a justified need. He said the city had rejected a similar offer that would have saved Corona $3.5 million, and didn’t understand why.
Irvine said the city received only one formal offer from the association that would have saved $1.2 million and was insufficient. In addition, city officials had been concerned that part of one proposal included conditions that might not have been legal, using one-time monies as pay.
Copyright 2011 The Press Enterprise, Inc.