By Rudolph Bush
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — Dallas’ police and fire unions have agreed to take pay cuts and mandatory unpaid leave to help the city close a massive budget gap.
The agreement reached late Tuesday was approved by 94.3 percent of the associations’ members, city officials said.
The deal will save City Hall about $22.4 million in the coming budget, a healthy chunk of the $130 million gap City Manager Mary Suhm has had to fill.
But it will require that officers and firefighters take 40 hours of unpaid leave during the coming work year.
That time will be taken off on officers and firefighters’ own schedules, not on days set by the city.
The city’s sworn employees will also take compensatory time instead of being paid overtime under the agreement.
For many, that will represent a significant pay reduction.
Though city managers are required to engage in discussions over salary and other benefits with sworn employee associations, the city is not required to reach an agreement with them as it would be under stricter collective bargaining laws.
Dallas Police Association president Glenn White said members were largely able to reach consensus on the deal.
“It was because this was an agreement the employee groups came up with, and was short of the manager being forced to make cuts in the way she wanted. We had input into the way those reductions would take place,” he said.
Suhm said the agreement was critical to balancing the budget.
“If we hadn’t been able to get this done, we would have had to have $22 million to $23 million worth of cuts,” she said.
Though the agreement cuts sworn employee salaries now, it will see them get a number of benefits in 2013, including a 3 percent across-the-board pay raise.
Copyright 2010 THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS