Farmer City Illinois

Farmer City approves contract with police officers

FARMER CITY -- Farmer City's three full-time police officers have their first collective bargaining contract with the city.

The city council has unanimously approved a three-year contract with the officers, who opted last year to be represented by the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police.

"For the life of the contract, it guarantees officers a 3 percent pay increase each year," said Interim City Manager Larry Woliung, who also serves as the town's police chief. The agreement became effective Monday, with pay increases retroactive to February 2010, which is when negotiations began.

A tentative agreement was reached May 7, and officers approved it on May 12. The council signed off on it Monday.

The contract also increases on-call pay from $3 to $5 an hour, initiates a shoe allowance and increases the maximum amount of vacation that can be earned from four to five weeks.

Officers may also sell back up to two weeks of unused vacation per year to the city as long as they have at least three earned.

Rick Stewart, an attorney with the FOP Labor Council in Springfield, said it is not unusual for first-time negotiations to take some time.

"There are always the basics to cover. You have to come up with the grievance procedure and things like that. We had to build a contract from the ground up," said Stewart, who felt negotiations went smoothly.

"This one took a little time, but in the end it worked out and I think both parties are happy," he said.

Woliung and the department's part-time officers are not covered by the FOP contract.

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Hi, my name is Andrew (or Drew) Rosten. My brother started this blog for me as a Christmas present. Consider it a gift that keeps on giving. I am recently a part-time sports clerk at the Herald & Review in Decatur, but am sometimes asked to report on sporting events in the Bloomington-Normal area. I graduated from Clinton High School and Illinois State University in Normal four years later with a degree in journalism. In my senior year at ISU, I was a sports reporter for the Daily Vidette.

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