Costa Mesa Police Assn. OKs proposed contract; City Council still must agree

After more than a year of negotiations, the Costa Mesa Police Assn. announced Wednesday that its membership has approved a new labor contract.

The union approved terms of the agreement — details of which were not immediately available — by 99.5% during a meeting last week, the group said in a news release. The pact still requires City Council approval.

“This is a new era,” association President David Sevilla said in a statement. “Ultimately, we believe the contract is fair and demonstrates the city’s value of our officers. If it is approved, it will bring a huge sense of relief for our officers.”

The association noted that the contract will require officers to pay into their pension funds for the first time. The contract, which would last through 2018 and affect about 125 officers, next faces two public hearings before the City Council, tentatively scheduled for Feb. 16 and March 1.

Sevilla said Costa Mesa police’s lack of a contract — the previous one expired in June 2014 — has “impacted recruiting and retention efforts as several cities compete for a limited pool of qualified candidates.”

“It’s been a disadvantage in recruiting, but now we are comparable to other cities,” Sevilla added. “Trying to attract candidates without being able to name the salary or benefits isn’t easy.”

Councilwoman Katrina Foley called the association’s tentative approval of the contract “great news.”

“We can finally move forward, and this is at a critical time,” she said. “Our neighbors are getting hit with burglaries, and we have a higher number of criminals on our streets that have been released from prison. We really need every tool in the toolbox to be able to recruit and maintain police officers in our department.”

“I think once this contract is finalized,” Foley added, “it will bring some stability to an unstable department that we’ve had for several years.”

The department is budgeted for 136 officers and has 108, according to recent staffing figures.

City officials have been aggressively recruiting in recent months and had hoped to get the department up to full staffing by July. Earlier this month, however, Chief Rob Sharpnack told the City Council that the department doesn’t appear to be quite reaching that goal.

“We haven’t really grown very much in the last year because we keep losing [officers],” Sharpnack said at the time. “We can’t replace as fast as we lose.”

Mayor Steve Mensinger and Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer have been excluded from the police association negotiations, leaving the bargaining up to Foley, Councilman Gary Monahan and Councilwoman Sandy Genis.

Mensinger and Righeimer have an ongoing civil lawsuit against the union, its former law firm and a private investigator, alleging that the group harassed and intimidated them during the 2012 election season — allegations the police association denies.

The councilmen contend that the investigator, former Riverside police Detective Chris Lanzillo, followed Righeimer home one evening in August 2012 and falsely reported him for drunk driving. Righeimer passed a field sobriety test and later publicly called the incident “a setup.”

Mensinger has also alleged that the firm illegally placed a GPS tracker on his vehicle, a discovery he learned about from an FBI and Orange County district attorney’s office investigation into the incidents.

Lanzillo and another alleged accomplice, Scott Impola, are facing criminal charges on the matter. They have pleaded not guilty.