Naperville sergeants get same 3 percent raises as patrol officers

The economic sting from last month's approval of a three-year police contract had barely worn off Tuesday, Naperville City Council members said, before they were faced with a second, identical agreement.

After a heated debate, members voted 5-4 vote to approve a contract for the city's 25 police sergeants that gives them the approximately 3 percent annual raises awarded to officers.

The increase will cost the city $577,000, or $192,000 during each of the three years. That cost, in addition to the approximately $2.6 million cost of the police officer contract, is a hill some council members say is too high to climb.

“I'd offer a challenge to our 13 unions. They should open up their contracts and go to zero,” said Councilman Doug Krause. “I'm seeing residents getting pay cuts, losing their jobs and getting their hours cut while our unions are getting the raises. And our nonunion employees, who work just as hard and haven't gotten raises in two years, are saying ‘What about us?'”

City attorney Margo Ely said the sergeants union, represented by the Metropolitan Alliance of Police, was in the process of bargaining its own contract at the same time as the FOP negotiations, but ultimately decided to take the same deal awarded to the FOP by an arbiter last month.

A message placed with the police alliance Wednesday was not returned.

Councilmen Krause, Grant Wehrli, Bob Fieseler and Dick Furstenau cast the four votes against the sergeants' contract.

Furstenau went so far as to say the sergeants shouldn't be unionized and called for the rank to be eliminated, with half of them demoted to patrol officers and half promoted to lieutenants, a proposal Mayor George Pradel called “utterly ludicrous.”

Fieseler voted against the contract for another reason. He said he fears the city administration would be forced to lay off sergeants to afford the raises, as was done when the city laid off six officers to save about $800,000 of the $2.6 million cost.

City Manager Doug Krieger said there is no plan to reduce the ranks of thecity's 25 sergeants.