Four Fox Lake police officers laid off after raise talks break down

Four Fox Lake police officers were laid off Tuesday after contract talks broke down over a 5 percent pay raise.

The village wanted officers to forgo the scheduled pay raise to avoid putting the budget further into the red. Police union officials pushed to keep the raises, so the village laid off the officers to offset that cost.

Mayor Ed Bender said the pay raise would have nearly tripled village's current budget deficit of about $250,000.

"If the village had accepted the pay raise we would be looking at a deficit closer to $700,000," said Bender. "We never asked them to take a pay cut and there were certainly no surprises in the negotiation process - our books have always been wide open to them."

Negotiations for the one-year contract lasted about 8 weeks and will be renewed next spring, officials said.

Before the layoffs, Fox Lake had 26 full-time police officers.

"We hoped all along that we could iron this out without losing police but apparently our officers don't read the papers," Bender said in reference to public-safety layoffs happening around the country. "We tried to salvage these positions and I am very disappointed that we couldn't."

Fox Lake Trustee Kevin Burt said the move was the village's only feasible course of action after negotiations failed.

"It is incredibly unfortunate how this turned out but we could not come to terms with them," he said. "It was a tough decision but it was one that had to be made."

Village Administrator Nancy Schuerr said that because of declining sales tax revenue, there is less money to spend on police salaries.

"I was not expecting the economy to shift like it did and hit us so hard in areas like sales-tax revenue," Schuerr said. "Sometimes when you start negotiations and the two sides aren't even close you hope to somehow find common ground. We just didn't find that common ground."

Fox Lake Police Chief Mike Behan declined to comment.