The Evanston City Council has approved a 4.5 percent pay increase for police patrol officers as part of a one-year contract that staves off the threat of a walkout by the city`s 127 rank-and-file officers.
The council`s action late Tuesday followed the approval of the contract last Friday by the police union. A tentative agreement was reached April 8 by negotiators for the city and the union, but details had been withheld until the union and the City Council could vote on it.
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The contract is retroactive to March 1 and runs until the end of next February.
Patrol officers and detectives at the top of the pay scale will be paid $41,800 a year, up from $40,000.
The accord also requires that officers increase their contributions for family health insurance coverage to $39 a month from the $25 a month, and to $17 a month for single coverage from $15 a month, according to Kenneth Labuda, secretary-treasurer of the Combined Counties Police Association.
Labuda was happy that the negotiating was over but had some misgivings about the length of the agreement.
”We try to go for at least two years,” he said. But the city wanted only a one-year pact. ”We`ll be back at the bargaining table in eight months,” Labuda said, adding that those sessions ”promise to be rougher.”
One breakthrough for the union, he said, was the city`s agreement to participate in a plan approved by the Internal Revenue Service that reduces the taxable income of officers by the amount they pay for their health insurance.
The agreement was reached after three sessions of federally mediated talks. The negotiators called in the mediator after bogging down on salary and health-benefit issues.
The officers had been working without a contract since the end of February, and the union leadership had threatened a strike if the talks failed. State law forbids police strikes, but officers in some towns have struck nevertheless.
Before the mediated talks began last month, John Flood, president of the union, said the city had been offering a wage increase of less than 3 percent and the union had been asking for 5 percent.
In addition, the city wanted the officers to pay more than $1,000 a year for their family medical plan, but Flood said the union wanted the city to pay for the plan.