Schaumburg, police command staff agree to new contract

After negotiations stalled for nearly 18 months, Schaumburg and the union representing its police command staff recently reached a new three-year contract giving the commanders small annual raises through 2015.

The new contract is retroactive to May 1, 2012 and gives the Schaumburg Police Department's 16 sergeants and five lieutenants 2-percent raises each Jan. 1 through its expiration on April 30, 2015.

Among the contract's nonfinancial aspects is an expanded provision allowing random drug tests up to four times a year.

Sgt. Vito Rago, president of the command officers association, said this was not a sticking point for the union's membership.

Though the provision affects every member of the union, it's aimed at those who oversee narcotics units within the department. Earlier this year, three members of a since-disbanded special unit that took on narcotics cases were arrested on drug conspiracy charges. They subsequently resigned.

Rago said the provision did not directly come out of recommendations made by consultant firm Hillard Heintze earlier this year.

The stalled contract negotiations were approaching the need for arbitration, but the time and money costs that involved would not have helped either side, Rago said.

Village Manager Brian Townsend said the breakthrough in talks was made possible through “a new era of cooperation.

“It was very collaborative, very cooperative,” he said.

Rago said it was Townsend himself — who became manager in late August — that enabled the stalemate to end.

“It was basically a lack of flexibility or communication,” Rago said of the breakdown of talks in 2012. “With Mr. Townsend coming in, he really changed that. We can talk to each other professionally.”

Rago said the union had taken less money in the past and fallen below the pay scale of comparable police departments. Though the new contract still doesn't bridge that difference, there's an understanding that it will take some time to get there, he added.