Miami Police Protest Budget Cuts

Cops gather outside city hall for layoff protest

Facing dozens of layoffs and millions of dollars in pay cuts, Miami's police officers held a city hall protest yesterday before the city's second budget meeting.

Members of the police union gathered outside City Hall at 4 p.m., just an hour or so before the city commission sat down to try to balance the budget for 2010.

With about a $118 million budget gap, Mayor Manny Diaz has threatened the mass layoffs if the city's four employee unions can't reach agreements to make contract concessions.

Last week, Diaz announced preliminary agreements with the general services and sanitation unions, and stated that negotiations were ongoing with the fire union.

Talks with the city's Fraternal Order of Police broke down after the FOP voted against pay cuts earlier this week, with union President Armando Aguilar acknowledging that they're at an impasse with the city.

"The City has failed to bargain in good faith, thus, leaving me no other option, than to refuse their offer," Aguilar said in a statement released yesterday.

The city already sent letters to over 100 city cops thanking them for their services, telling them that they'll be jobless if the union can't come to an agreement by Oct. 1, when the city must have its budget balanced.

Aguilar said the FOP proposed reductions in the area of $7.4 million, but that the city is demanding a reduction of over $9.7 million by the police union.

Meanwhile, salary cuts seem inevitable in the fire union, where generous compensation packages and overtime rates have bloated the department's salaries to historic levels.

Of the approximately 630 city firefighters, 19 are making over $300,00 a year and a whopping 161 are making over $200,000, according to the Miami Herald.

The firefighters realize that salary cuts are inevitable.

"We are well compensated, I'm not going to argue that we aren't," Miami firefighters union president Robert Suarez told the Herald. "We know if we squeeze too much, the city's going to choke."

City commissioners worked late into the night during last night's meeting, trying to fill the sizable budget gap, with Diaz and Aguilar sparring over their failed negotiations.

A final vote on the $511 million budget likely won't come until next week, when the city's 3,500 employees will discover their fate.

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