Police union blames Malin for parking dispute
By Tom Saul

Oil pools sometimes are found in the basement and black mold spews from vents in the Davenport police headquarters building at 420 Harrison St., say members of the board that heads the police union.

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Click comment to go to storySo, yes, the union’s 165 members are all for construction of a new $19.9 million police station that is scheduled to start next month, some of them repeatedly said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon.


What they will not abide, said Karl Drezek, the union’s secretary-treasurer, is the city forcing a parking solution on them that they do not agree with and that they say is unsafe for some of their members.

“They felt they could just take our parking and not talk to us about it,” he said. “If they can do that, what in the contract is next?”

The union went to court last week to seek a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction to block the city from taking 95 parking spaces in a lot at West 4th and Harrison streets, the site of the new police building.

Those parking spaces are guaranteed to the union in a labor contract that runs until July 1. In a written statement, the union blamed City Administrator Craig Malin for the dispute, claiming he rejected without talking to them a resolution that would have allowed the police department to pay for the use of empty stalls in a city-owned parking ramp at West 2nd and Harrison streets.

“It is our understanding that every person involved in this particular plan, including the union, was in agreement to this offer until it reached the hands of (Malin),” the statement reads. “Mr. Malin stated that he had no intention of showing favoritism to one city department over another by allowing police personnel to use the parking ramp, although payment was going to be made for these spots.”

The union statement says Malin stated in a memo to aldermen and the mayor Dec. 1 that “he was authorizing other city employees the use of parking slots at 2nd and Harrison (streets) with free parking meter passes. We are not asking for free parking, or even preferential treatment, we are simply asking for safe parking.”

In his own written statement, Malin said Tuesday night that it is “regrettable” the union is bargaining through the news media. The city has developed a “10-point plan” to offer parking to police employees and the union can respond to it if it so chooses, he added.

The only people who are being allowed to use the ramp during the construction project are members of the city’s unpaid boards and commissions, he stated, “along with intermittent use by employees from distant departments who may need to be at City Hall from time to time.

“If, as the (union) statement suggests, they would like to pay for spaces at the Harrison and Ripley parking ramp, the city would welcome them as we would any customer,” he said.

The union is set to go to court Dec. 15 to block construction of the new police station building. Jason Gillaspie, a union board member, said the group will call off the action if a satisfactory agreement is reached with the city by then.

The City Council is scheduled to vote tonight to award a contract to Williams Brothers Construction of Peoria, Ill., to build the new station.

Tom Saul can be contacted at (563) 383-2453 or tsaul@qctimes.com.
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