North Las Vegas council considers making $7.7 million settlement offer next week

North Las Vegas leaders will look to ratify a proposed settle­ment with city bargaining groups Wednesday, a week after offering union employees an ultimatum: Make a deal or brace for layoffs.

Payments to around 500 rank-and-file public safety employees take up the bulk of a tentative $7.7 million agreement, with dollars set aside for city firefighters totaling around half of police officers’ $4.2 million settlement offer.

Roughly 600 members of Teamsters Local 14, the city’s largest employee union, would divvy up around $1.2 million under the deal, with the city’s few dozen police supervisors set to split $143,000.

Every one of those dollars remains contingent on “certain concessions” from each bargaining group. City officials did not return requests for comment on what those concessions might be or to which groups they would apply.

The settlement offer up for City Council approval next week is worth about 30 cents on the dollar to union leaders, winners of a two-year, multimillion-dollar legal battle over pay raises and benefits suspended under a city-declared “fiscal emergency” in June 2012.

The offer is worth around 76 cents on the dollar to Mike Yarter’s nearly 300 Police Officers Association members, who have rejected two settlement deals drawn up by city officials this month.

Yarter, already in the process of negotiating police contracts that expire in June, said his members are on board with a half-dozen concessions for new hires, including a provision that requires rookie police to move within city limits before logging six months on the job.

They are not willing to take on an estimated $8 million in future merit pay cuts and health care contribution increases, moves Yarter fears would kill the city’s ability to attract new officers.

He and other union leaders aren’t sure city officials have put all of their settlement chips on the table and say layoffs won’t stop them from pursuing some $25 million in pay raises and benefits awarded to employees by a Clark County district judge in January.

“The lawsuit doesn’t go away if the city lays people off,” Yarter said. “We can still go back to the court and seek an order for judgment. So I doubt layoff threats will be effective.”

City leaders would not comment on what impact threatened 10 percent to 20 percent across-the-board cuts could have on a potential judgment order.

The Review-Journal has learned they plan to take a case-by-case approach to ongoing settlement talks, one officials hope will help prevent a few union holdouts from triggering citywide layoffs.

Meanwhile, two of four city union heads have openly rooted for new oversight of the city’s books, highlighting receivership as their preferred alternative to the offer drafted by city officials.

Receivership, the state’s broadly untested alternative to municipal bankruptcy, would give a team of state-appointed financial experts the power to increase property taxes and negotiate future, but not existing, union contracts.

Ryann Juden, Mayor John Lee’s chief of staff, said a state-led intervention doesn’t count as much of a substitute for North Las Vegas’ standing offer.

He is not sure anyone wants to see Nevada’s fourth largest city fall short of a deal.

“There’s no doubt that what happens in North Las Vegas has major implications for the whole region,” Juden said at a Thursday news conference. “There’s no safe harbor at the state level. The state is not prepared for (receivership). The counties and cities aren’t prepared for a merger or consolidation. That’s why there’s zero appetite to do it.”

Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter @JamesDeHaven.