SEAL BEACH : New Contracts OKd for City Employees

The City Council approved new contracts for all city employees this week, giving most workers a 3% increase in wages and benefits that will take effect later this year.

The previous contracts for all employees expired in July, 1991, but their bargaining units agreed to hold off on contract negotiations for six months. The last increase was in July, 1990, and salaries have remained frozen since then.

“Other cities are freezing, rolling back and cutting salaries now,” City Manager Jerry L. Bankston said. “We were a year ahead of them in taking that action.”

The new 15-month contract negotiated with the Police Officers Assn. calls for a 3% increase in wages and benefits to take effect in July, when the new fiscal year begins.

The new 15-month contract with the Orange County Employees Assn., which represents service and clerical employees, calls for the city to pay $15 a month more toward health insurance beginning in February and to increase wages and benefits by 3% beginning in September, 1992.

Higher-ranking employees also will receive raises and increases in their benefits packages, officials said.

Meanwhile, the city’s hiring freeze is still on and the staff has been substantially reduced through attrition.

“The city has an authorized work force of 126 employees and is presently staffed at 107,” Bankston said.

Although the city’s management staff technically is exempt from the hiring freeze, it has been hit even harder, Bankston said. Within the last year or so, the city has lost and not replaced its finance director, chief lifeguard and a police captain.

A 40-hour-a-week public works director position was replaced with an outside contract for 10 hours a week, and two public works superintendent positions were merged into one after one person quit.

Most recently, Assistant City Manager Robert Archibold gave notice, effective Feb. 1. Archibold had acted temporarily as city manager before Bankston was hired, and was later made acting finance director. He will now work for Briggeman Disposal, one of the city’s trash contractors.

“With him gone, I am in essence down a director of finance and an assistant city manager,” Bankston said.