BIDDEFORD — The city and the labor unions representing its police officers and public works employees are currently locked in a battle over new contract negotiations.

When negotiations started about six months ago, the city drafted a proposal for new contracts that included salary and benefit cuts for officers at the Biddeford Police Department and the city’s public works employees, whose contracts expired on June 30. The proposal was met with strong resistance from union representatives, who argued the cuts would hurt not only the employees and their families but also the community as a whole.

Since then, city officials and union representatives have met a handful of times but remain at an impasse over the contract negotiations, Michael Wing, the city’s negotiator, said Monday.

Meanwhile, the union representing Biddeford’s firefighters has declined to even meet with the city regarding the firefighters’ contracts, prompting Wing to file a complaint with the Maine Labor Relations Board.

In a letter dated July 1 and sent to Marc Ayotte, executive director of the Labor Relations Board, Wing said, “The (firefighters’) union has no intention of meeting with the city to negotiate a successor agreement. ”¦ The reasons why the union does not want to meet with the city are clear. The union is aware that the city has put forward proposals to other city bargaining units asking for some concessions so if the union does not meet with the city they will never have to receive and consider the city’s proposals.”

Philip Greenwood, chief steward of the police officers’ union, said Monday that the city’s request for salary and benefit cuts at the police department more or less came as a surprise to him, considering the department has “taken very (few) increases” over the last decade or so.

“This is a straight-up slap in our face, an insult,” said Greenwood, who also serves as supervisor of detectives at the BPD and on the Maine Violent Offender Task Force.

Although the city’s initial proposal included the elimination of pay increases once an officer has been employed for more than six years, Wing said that is no longer the case, and as it stands, the city’s proposal primarily targets benefits.

“We would not eliminate the longevity plans,” he said. “The focus is very much on the benefits side.”

For example, Wing said the city would like to eliminate the accrual of unused sick time for police officers; currently, officers can accrue and later be compensated for up to 180 unused sick days. The city is also interested in doing away with health insurance for retired officers because that practice is “very unusual in the municipal sector,” he said.

“We are interested in trying to reduce some of our costs,” Wing said of the labor negotiations as a whole. “These labor contracts are very expensive contracts … in comparison to what is the norm in the state.”

The Biddeford Personnel Committee ”“ made up of City Councilors John McCurry, Roger Hurtubise, Michael Ready and Stephen St. Cyr ”“ spent a lot of time digesting the contracts and “think the benefits side of these contracts is very rich,” he said.

Greenwood, however, sees the cuts as too severe, especially when just a few months ago the city agreed to pay John Bubier, whose contract as city manager also expired on June 30, about $75,000 annually to continue working at City Hall in a newly created, part-time role.

“This is just craziness and there’s no need for it,” he said. “You come with these kind of draconian, slash-type cuts and you’re coming to hurt our families.”

Furthermore, Greenwood said he fears if implemented, the cuts would incite eight to 10 officers to leave the department. “Our greatest loss would be our five- to ten-year officers,” he said. “That would have the biggest impact on the city as a whole. … Those are your mentors, your trainers for the new guys coming on the job.”

Greenwood said officers leaving would spell trouble for the community especially at a time when fewer people than ever are applying to become police officers. “People are not coming into this profession for a multitude of reasons,” he said.

Tim Sevigny, president of the Biddeford firefighters’ union, and Andrew Stevenson, vice president of the union, both said Monday that after hearing about the city’s proposal calling for salary and benefit cuts at its police and public works departments, they declined to meet with Wing because they did not want to see the Biddeford Fire Department get targeted in the same way.

“We don’t want to negotiate with bad faith, and this is bad faith,” Stevenson said of the city’s intentions. “This is a bad offer.”

Sevigny said the contract negotiations also come at a time when there are “so many things not in place” ”“ namely, a fire chief. The department has been without a chief ”“ operating under Deputy Chief Scott Gagne’s command ”“ since former Fire Chief Joseph Warren retired in March.

“Our standpoint is we don’t want to sign a contract and lock a chief into a contract,” said Stevenson. “We don’t want to tie his hands into that contract for three or four years.”

Both Sevigny and Stevenson said they felt the city’s desire to cut benefits for public safety employees is representative of a trend in Biddeford in which “essential employees,” such as firefighters and police officers, are thought of as less important than “non-essential” ones.

For example, they said, while some councilors have expressed a desire to save money by not hiring a new fire chief ”“ and instead making one of the BFD’s three deputy chiefs the new chief ”“ the city has at the same time agreed to create a new position for Bubier in the Economic Development Office as well as hired Wing to negotiate labor contracts.

“You have a city manager who makes $120,000 a year and he can’t sit down and hash out a contract?” said Stevenson.

In an email this morning, Curt Koehler, the city’s finance director, explained that Wing is hired not only for labor negotiations but also as a human resources consultant to assist in multiple areas, such as “employee grievances that escalate beyond the city manager level or anything else in the personnel area that requires wide knowledge of the laws and customs related to employee relations.”

Sevigny and Stevenson said that given the current demands on Biddeford firefighters, whom they described as overworked but still very productive, any cuts to the department ”“ be it through contract negotiations or in future budgets ”“ would prove detrimental to the community.

“If you call 911 and you’re in Biddeford, you’re probably expecting someone from Biddeford to show up, and right now we cannot guarantee that,” said Sevigny.

“In Maine, we’re one of the busiest, if not the busiest, departments per position,” said Stevenson, who added that based on current projections, the department’s firefighters will see about 800 more calls this year over last ”“ a 16 percent increase. “That’s unheard of.”

In a similar vein, Greenwood said the city’s police officers are tasked daily with patrolling one of Maine’s most dangerous cities in terms of crime rate per capita. “Policing Biddeford is not policing Cape Elizabeth, it’s not policing Kennebunkport,” he said.

The prospect of cuts to retired Biddeford firefighters’ health insurance specifically raised concerns with Sevigny and Stevenson, who likened firefighting to serving in the military in the sense that many firefighters suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

“The dead people we see are not like the dead people you see at a funeral,” said Sevigny. The hardest part of the job is the effect of “seeing people who’ve shot themselves in the face, hanged themselves or overdosed.”

“The toll, it’s unbelievable,” said Stevenson.

In an email Monday night, Wing was more specific about why Biddeford would like to see cuts in benefits for public safety workers, saying, “The city is concerned about retiree health insurance, excess sick leave accumulation and other employee benefits that are in excess of industry standards. Maintaining these benefits at their present levels is an unfair burden which the taxpayers of Biddeford cannot afford.”

Moving forward, Wing said the Labor Relations Board will assign a mediator to aid in the negotiations between the city and the unions representing its police officers and public works employees. Then, if an agreement still cannot be made with the assistance of the mediator, more steps, such as hiring a panel of arbitrators, will be taken to ensure that goal is met, he said.

A hearing has been scheduled for this Thursday in Augusta to address Wing’s complaint against the Biddeford firefighters’ union.

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].