City workers call fire contract unfair

City employees filled many of the seats in Costa Mesa’s City Hall Tuesday night to protest the contract that the City Council approved last week with the firefighters’ union.

In order to cut the city’s budget, office workers, police officers and others agreed to take a 5% pay cut by accepting furloughs, while the firefighters’ union negotiated a four-year deal that gave them an earlier retirement in exchange for their forgoing a scheduled pay raise.

Many city staffers consider the agreement unfair, saying that firefighters should have taken the same furloughs as the other employees.

“Everyone else lost 5% of their paycheck and [the firefighters] gained an enhanced retirement benefit,” said Larry Lykins, who came to the meeting to represent the Costa Mesa employees on behalf of the Orange County Employees Assn.

Fire union leaders said throughout the negotiations that furloughs would not work because of a provision in their contract that required a minimum of 32 firefighters on duty during each shift. If firefighters were put on furloughs, the city would have to pay overtime wages to keep the stations staffed at the mandatory level, said union President Tim Vasin.

As part of its deal with the city, the firefighters agreed to bring the mandatory minimum staffing level in the contract down to 28 people, instead of 32.

Before the meeting, Mayor Allan Mansoor appealed the new contract, which was approved, 3 to 2, at a special meeting last week.

The special meeting was called by city officials on unusually short notice after the negotiators on both sides arrived at a compromise.

The city estimates that the fire contract will save at least $5.3 million during the remaining four years because 12 firefighters are anticipated to retire early due to the better pension and an extra two years of service credit the city is offering all of its employees.

Mansoor, along with Councilman Eric Bever, voted against the package, which passed with the support of Mayor Pro Tem Wendy Leece, Councilwoman Katrina Foley and Councilman Gary Monahan.

“Most of the taxpaying public was not aware of this and they deserve an opportunity to be heard on this permanent fiscal decision as there is only short-term savings under this new agreement due to a reduction in staffing levels. Once new positions are added back it will cost the taxpayers far more in the long run,” Mansoor wrote in the appeal.

Under the firefighters’ agreement, pension benefits increased from 3% of salary at age 55 to 3% of salary at age 50, which brings Costa Mesa’s pension plan in line with all of the surrounding cities that already got 3% at 50. In exchange, the fire department is giving up a 4.9% pay raise they were scheduled to receive.

Overall, the trade off is expected to cost the city slightly more money per employee, but with the 12 employees leaving, its payroll will get smaller in the short term. What happens in the long term depends on whether the city manager decides to hire those 12 employees back when its financial health improves.

The appeal is expected to be heard at the Sept. 1 City Council meeting, according to the city clerk’s office.

In other news, the council voted unanimously to extend its moratorium on new massage parlors and new massage therapist licenses 10 months and 15 days, despite opposition from massage business owners who said that the ordinance would make it difficult to run legitimate businesses and wouldn’t do much to curb illicit ones.

With the large number of massage parlors in the city, police officers said that adequately regulating them and making sure that they weren’t engaged in prostitution was becoming impossible. The city wants time to draft new ordinances that would make enforcement easier.

City Atty. Kimberly Hall Barlow said that it is possible that the city could pass those ordinances before the moratorium expires, in which case the moratorium could be repealed early.