Council postpones vote on firefighters contract
| Wednesday, Sep 08 2010 09:54 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Sep 08 2010 09:54 PM
The Bakersfield City Council voted unanimously to wait two weeks before deciding on whether to impose a contract on city firefighters.
Red shirts -- worn by firefighters and their supporters -- packed council chambers for the long and sometimes emotional session.
The council had been set to decide on whether to impose the city's "last, best and final" offer during the impasse hearing.
But Jeff Heinle, an engineer with the Bakersfield Fire Department -- at the end of a rousing speech that drew applause from the crowd -- asked the council to wait two weeks and look more closely at tricky staffing and safety issues as well as potential impacts to insurance rates.
Councilmember Irma Carson made a motion to postpone the decision.
Councilmember Sue Benham agreed, noting some contract protections proposed for removal have been in place 30 years.
When councilmembers take up the matter again Sept. 22, it's unlikely they'll have many pleasant options on the table. They need to cut nearly $900,000 from the fire department's yearly budget, on an ongoing basis, in order to balance the city budget.
Firefighters have been without a contract since early 2008, and city police even longer, as tensions between city administrators, some councilmembers and the unions have increased. A local ballot measure proposed by Councilmember Zack Scrivner looms in the background; city voters will decide in November whether to lower pension benefits for newly hired police and firefighters starting in 2011.
In other business, the council:
* Heard comments from Benham about recent violence in Jastro and Planz parks. Benham said she wants the council's safe neighborhoods committee to discuss options such as volunteer park patrols. She also wants the parks department to consider partnering with local media on an anti-littering campaign. She strongly rejected the idea some have suggested to her to close the spray park at Jastro, saying public parks were never meant for the exclusive use of neighborhood residents and she did not want to see the community divided by efforts to "keep away outsiders."
* Appointed Barbara Lomas to the city planning commission to replace the late Thomas McGinnis.
