LaVerne POA, led by its President, Justin Newman, was able to secure a 3 year contract for its members, keeping them competitive in the law enforcement market going into the next decade.  Here too, research and data was essential to obtaining a successful resolution to negotiations.  The strong argument continues to prevail that in order to remain competitive, cities must provide competitive pay and benefits to its police officers.  This message started with past POA President, Cory Leeper, who also assisted  the negotiating team in reaching an agreement.

             The end result reached at the bargaining table resulted in a 3 year agreement that calls for the City to do a salary survey each January and provide the median pay as determined by the survey.  This calls for a 6% increase effective January of 2008 and approximately 4.5% each year thereafter.  Additionally, the contract calls for the City to maintain and pay for the full medical premium for family coverage under the Blue Cross HMO plan.  Accordingly, the health insurance coverage will increase annually to insure the officer is not paying out of pocket for medical expenses.  The POA had been pushing for quite some time to implement Special Assignment Pay which was one benefit that it did not enjoy as most of its counterparts in the local area had.  The City finally agreed to provide a flat amount of $175.00 for personnel assigned to the Detective Bureau and Traffic.  Of course, the POA was pushing for a percentage amount, however, the flat amount did equate to a 3% increase for the affected personnel.