All Trotwood Employees Except Police Accept Pay Cuts

By Bruce Kettelle

With grim faces the Trotwood City Council approved resolutions Monday night to close an unexpected midyear budget gap. The Police Department were the only ones not to agree to pay cuts. The manager asked for a 20% reduction in pay for all employees between now and the end of 2009.

The special meeting started at 5pm with four of the city’s seven city council members in attendance. After a three hour closed door session the four members voted unanimously to adopt the cuts which also included a reduction in pay for the council members themselves.

“We had a long and lengthy session about what we have to do,” said Mayor Darreyl Davis as they returned to the public portion of the meeting lasting another 10 minutes.

City Manager Mike Lucking explained that he approached all the unions and non-union employees with the cost cutting proposal to reduce each employee’s pay by 7.5% and for each employee to take 80 hours of unpaid furlough between now and December 31.

The public works and the firefighter unions ratified their acceptance agreeing to an amendment of their union contracts.

Police patrolman Henry Crist is the union employee representative. He said their union is anxious to work out a compromise. The union and city have reached an impasse in the negotiation and they are now entering a fact-finding phase to present their sides to a third party mediator. “I hope that can happen in the next couple of weeks,” he said.

Crist said the union made a counterproposal to the city’s plan. “They turned down our proposal and said it had to be our proposal or nothing,” He said the union members were disappointed the news has not mentioned their counter offer.

Because the police did not accept the pay reduction offer the council approved layoffs of up to seven officers and up to two sergeants. The sergeants union also rejected the city’s plan.

“The union has other recourses against the layoffs approved tonight,” added Crist. Crist said the contents of the counterproposal couldn’t be released since they are still in contract negotiations.

“We don’t want to lay off anyone,” said Mayor Davis after the meeting. “We’re going to keep talking with the police union.” He was pleased that the other unions and non-union employees agreed to the reduction.

Trotwood reached 15.3% unemployment in June and income taxes have fallen far short of budget projections due to the troubled economy. The wage cuts are an effort to make up a projected $557,000 shortfall to balance this year’s budget.

Davis said they have explored some options that did not require wage reductions or layoffs but those options ultimately would not accomplish their budget goals.

Related story at http://totallytrotwood.blogspot.com/2009/07/trotwood-seeks-pay-cuts-to-balance.html