City to cops: Pay freeze or layoffs?

Union is told it also has to agree to four days without pay to save jobs of 11 officers.

Dayton City Manager Rashad Young

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Staff photo by Lisa Powell Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl

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Staff photo by Skip Peterson Randy Beane, president of the Dayton Fraternal Order of Police

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By Joanne Huist Smith and Kyle Nagel, Staff Writers Updated 1:52 AM Thursday, July 9, 2009

DAYTON — If Dayton’s police union agrees to accept a proposed wage freeze and four days without pay, City Manager Rashad Young said 11 officers slated to be cut from the force Aug. 3 would keep their jobs.

“They will not be laid off,” he said. “This is not a threat. It is not an ultimatum. It is the reality of our situation.”

The city faces a roughly $6 million shortfall for 2009. Young estimated that the job reductions in the Police Department will save the city about $773,000 a year, which equals a 1.5 percent reduction in the Police Department’s 2009 budget.

“Unfortunately, we are joining a growing list of other communities that have been forced to consider police personnel reductions as part of their overall cost-cutting moves,” Young said. “We need this relief. It really is about the dollar amount, not how we get there.”

The officers, who have a little less than a year of experience, were trained in the Dayton Police Academy and are “pretty devastated” by the news, said Randy Beane, president of the Dayton Fraternal Order of Police.

Beane said he would discuss Young’s statement with his membership and the decision on whether to accept it would be up to them. He said that the membership doesn’t believe four furlough days are necessary economically, but was more open to discussing the wage freeze.

“We’re quite perplexed,” Beane said. “We’re kind of concerned about the ethics involved in doing this.”

Earlier this year, the Dayton Public Service Union, the city’s largest bargaining unit, agreed to accept a wage freeze and four non-paid days to help offset the budget crisis. All nonbargaining unit employees in the executive, management and midmanagement ranks made similar concessions.

“Our goal as an organization is to achieve a shared sacrifice among all city of Dayton employees so we can weather this rough period with minimal job cut,” Young said.

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