SCHENECTADY — After nearly three years of talking, the Schenectady police are getting a raise — and they didn’t have to give up any of their contractual benefits to get it.

Arbitrator Jeff Selchick ruled Tuesday that the police should get 4 percent raises, retroactive to 2006 and 2007.

New recruits who were hired at a salary of $29,717 will see a $2,425 increase, while investigators will see a $4,401 raise on their base pay of $53,939.

Selchick signed off on the two-year deal when the police union and the city could not come to an agreement on their own.

There are no changes in the contract other than the raises. All of the issues that city officials proposed, from a health insurance contribution from officers to a 12-hour work day and the elimination of compensatory time off, were rejected.

Police Benevolent Association President Bob Hamilton said the deal gave him everything he wanted.

“All we want is a cost-of-living raise,” he said.

That’s just about what he got. The consumer price index rose 4.1 percent last year and 3 percent in 2006, according to the Department of Labor Statistics.

While the city didn’t get any of the things Mayor Brian U. Stratton wanted, he saw a silver lining in the decision.

“They essentially have a two-year deal that is already 10 months expired,” Stratton said.

The city had set aside money to pay for retroactive raises, so the decision won’t hurt the $14.7 million police budget, he added.

Now both sides are heading back to negotiations. Both said they want to come to an agreement without arbitrators this time.

But Hamilton said Stratton must be willing to buy his concessions.

“You can’t offer us a cost-of-living raise and ask for 10 things,” he said.

Stratton said the city will argue for reforms, but may not have any money to sweeten the deal.

“Financially, we’re not going to be able to talk about 4 percent raises,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be talking about zeroes. That’s the economic reality.”

STICKING POINTS

Last year, the police almost got a deal in which they would get 4 percent raises every year through 2010. Hamilton started negotiations by saying the 165-member force would be willing to pay 5 percent of their health insurance premiums in exchange for 4 percent raises each year — the same deal given to the city firefighters.

“I offered the health givebacks. They said no,” Hamilton said Thursday, adding that he wasn’t going to bring a different proposal back to his members.

“I can’t bring back a deal that is far worse than the firemen,” he said.

Stratton acknowledged that he thought seriously about accepting Hamilton’s offer. But he ultimately decided other reforms to the contract were more important than health insurance contributions.

“We want health insurance [givebacks] but comp time and union leave are more problematic and quite frankly more costly too,” he said.

Stratton said he’s glad he didn’t take the health insurance deal.

“We’d be in a very tight jam if we’d locked into a 4 percent raise for a five-year deal,” Stratton said. “No, I’m glad we did what we did, given the tremendous economic turnaround that we’ve all looked at in horror this last week.”

Hamilton is already prepared to argue that the city won’t save any money by eliminating comp time, which city officials have blamed for everything from escalating overtime costs to slow response times and poor arrest rates. The city wants to pay officers overtime instead of letting them earn days off when they work beyond their scheduled shifts.

Hamilton said he commissioned a multiyear study of the situation to prove that the department rarely calls in extra officers on overtime to fill in when someone takes a day off with comp time.

“A large percentage of the time, when someone takes a day off, it doesn’t create overtime. The city is saving money rather than paying overtime,” Hamilton said.

The city also has a study, which was done in-house, that shows the opposite. A Sunday Gazette review of comp time found that it led to substantially reduced staffing on weekends, but that review did not look at how many officers were brought in on overtime to fill in the gaps.

While the city and union negotiate, the regulations in the contract remain in effect. However, officers will not receive new raises until a new deal is struck. Their last contractual raises were in 2005.

In determining the new raises, Selchick didn’t consider the issues by himself. The decision was made by a three-member arbitration panel. The city chose one member, appointing Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden. The Police Benevolent Association chose the other member, picking its attorney, Michael Ravalli. However, since the two men’s votes canceled each other out, Selchick made the final decision.