Dixon City Council Directs Negotiations to Resume with Dixon Firefighters

In a nearly three-hour-long meeting the postponed an impasse hearing and directed its team back to the negotiation table with the 15-member Dixon Professional Firefighters Association Local 4665.

 The firefighters’ union and the city’s negotiation team essentially have two weeks, until the next council meeting, to agree on a contract that will save the city $215,671 within two years.

It’s an amount that DPFA President Brian Schroeder said is achievable, but not without DPFA’s support.

“Our next step is to go back to our membership and meet with them and come up with some sort of compromise to get to the council’s goal,” he said.

Throughout the negotiations, DPFA membership said the city’s negotiation team failed to acknowledge its history of making concessions that have helped the city. For example, when the city instituted its furlough program, Dixon firefighters opted to take the furlough as a 4.6 percent reduction in their pay in order to maintain staffing levels within a department that’s understaffed by two firefighters.

DPFA members asked the city to justify a base salary reduction when no other labor groups within the city, they said, were asked to make a similar concession. But last night, the union learned that Dixon Police Officers Association – a group that was negotiating with the city around the same time that the DPFA was in its negotiations – made a pay-reduction concession.

According to a staff report, the DPOA’s two-year MOU includes a savings to the city of $302,080 and calls for a 3.5 percent reduction in base salary for its members during the first year, and an additional 3.5 percent salary reduction the following year. The contract for the DPOA also called for similar concessions as the two-year “last, best and final” deal proposed to the DPFA.

Asked if the city’s goal of saving $215,671 was reasonable for his union, DPFA President Schroeder said: “During this time the PD was going through negotiations too, we knew nothing of what was going on with them. It’s going to be tough, it’s definitely going to be tough, but it’s attainable.”

Should negotiations fail within the two-week allotted time frame, the council will seek to impose a contract on the union.

The imposed one-year contract calls for an 8 percent reduction in salaries effective July 3, 2011; a reduction of 25 percent in the Medical Benefit Allowance cash out for firefighters who opt out of receiving medical benefits; and a retirement contribution of 3 percent at 55 years for firefighters hired after approval of the MOU.

It’s a contract that attorney Eddie Kreisberg, the city’s labor advisor and negotiation representative, said would save the city $144,082. The one-year contract however, would have the union and the city come back to the bargaining table next spring in which the city would search for additional concessions.

“No one wanted to be here tonight everyone … would have liked to get a deal however the city can only compromise so much it has to balance its financial interests, its policy decisions about what’s appropriate levels of compensation, service levels, reserves and all the rest,” Kreisberg said.

Kreisberg told the council that the city has a structural deficit in the excess of $700,000 and that all labor groups whose contracts are up for negotiation will have to make similar concessions. Kreisberg also acknowledged the past concessions made by DPFA membership, but added that the city needs more concessions to remain fiscally viable.

After Kreisberg’s presentation to the council, several DPFA members made a presentation as well.

Richard Reed, a DPFA negotiator, told the council that city negotiators acted more as messengers to the city council and didn’t act in the full capacity of negotiators.

“We believe that some of the other bargaining groups have not been hit as hard as the 15 members of the fire department and we would like to see some equity,” he said.

He urged the council to direct its negotiation team to go back to the table with the firefighters’ union.

Dixon Fire Capt. Dean Sarley, who is the vice president of the DPFA, told the council that his union members give a 100 percent effort in their jobs and deserve to be treated fairly.

“I think that we can pretty much agree on one thing and that is something has to be done to help save some money for the city,” he told the council. “There is a problem, but taxing our firefighters over $20,000 a year is pretty much insane by anybody’s standards. Remember there is only 15 of us, all we are asking for is, staff/council, is some parity.”

The chambers of the Dixon City Council were filled with family members and supporters of DPFA. Many of them spoke during the public comment section of the meeting.

“I think that the fire department, we don’t need to lose any more of their people because it will cost us more in the long run,” Dixon resident Paul Jones said. “Because when we go to hire people it costs training, time and everything to train these people. I think we should do everything we can to keep them onboard.”

“I just have a simple request, work with these guys don’t impose something on them, work with them,” Dixon resident Nick Santini told the council. “How many meetings has there been, eight? That’s not enough. Continue to work with them. I know you have a job to do, to balance the budget, but also think about these men and what they do, that’s all I ask of you.”

After several other comments, the council then took up a lengthy discussion regarding the issue.

“I see both sides of this thing,” Vice Mayor Michael Ceremello said. “We are looking at it as being … beat up by you guys, you are looking at it (as) getting beat up by us. Frankly the only thing that I am looking at is this $710,000 budget deficit. You are being asked to contribute $140,000 towards this. Police is giving up $300,000 over two years. So it’s not quite equivalent but we are doing things to make thing equal amongst the groups.”

“The economics of the time require very tough decisions,” Mayor Jack Batchelor said. “Many of us would rather throw up than to have to make those decisions.”

Batchelor said he would like to “take one more bite of the apple,” and have the city’s negotiation team go back to the bargaining table with the union, in an attempt to get to the savings figure that the city is asking for.

Councilman Rick Fuller echoed Batchelor’s statements.

“We need to do something tonight one way or the other,” Fuller said. “I’m inclined to go along with what the mayor says, maybe we need one more meeting. We don’t want to harm you or your family or your wage-earning potential. We are in very critical economic times.”

Councilman Bogue said he was opposed to going back to the negotiation table, saying that the union did not offer any counter proposals until the city’s negotiation team initiated their “last, best and final offer.”

“You fail to recognize that Dixon is running out of money,” Bogue told the union, reading from a prepared statement. “We told you the situation Dixon is in and your response (was) to ask for raises.”

He told the union that he has to make decisions that he does not enjoy but are necessary.

“It does not matter how much you do not like the cuts, it does not matter how much we do not like making the cuts, if we do not do this, the City of Dixon is heading towards bankruptcy,” he said. “If that occurs salary and personnel cuts will be far more severe than what we are looking at now. If you want to see the effects of bankruptcy go for a drive in Vallejo as I did the weekend before last, it’s not very pretty. You will see our future if we do not change what we are doing now.”

Dane Besneatte, who drove to Dixon from a trial in Los Angeles, was the last councilman to sound off on the impasse.

“There’s 15 firefighter members of the union and one of the nights that we were in closed session … each of us conceded things, each of us stood our ground on some issues,” he said.  “What we did was to compromise and we did reduce the concessions. We were greeted with a demand for a 5 percent increase in additional pay. And if anything, as hard as it is for us to do what we are doing, to be given that was an insult to the people who live in this city, the tax payers who pay the wages of those who work here.”

Besneatte said he was attempting to find a fair solution to the impasse and asked the union to give the city council a solution that they could live with and at the same time save the city its target amount.

After the council directed its negotiation team to resume negotiations with the union, Mayor Batchelor said: “Negotiations are ongoing and I’m not willing to just impose something without taking one more bite of the apple. Now will that additional bite mean positive things? I certainly hope so, I think a lot of feelings were aired tonight and I think we’ll get there, I am cautiously optimistic that we will get there.”

After the close of last night’s meeting Bogue said the outcome was fair, given what he learned about the negotiations from the city’s negotiator.

“What the city’s negotiator told me this evening was that there was a lot of information that they didn’t receive. Like every time they sat down for negotiations, the figures were changing every time. That causes me some concern because while the figure did change initially to my knowledge, the last three meetings, the figures should have been the same. So there was apparently a breakdown of communication as I’m being told. So I’m somewhat satisfied with this evening in the sense that the negotiators are going to sit down once again now that there’s more clarification of what’s being (sought) and I hope they come up to a manner in which even though the dollar figure should be the same the way that it’s applied may be more favorable to our firefighters.”

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