Well last night 3 hour dog and pony show is now history and the firefighters contracts have been approved. After 18 months of negotiations, stall tactics, hard feelings going all around between council members and fire fighters and the long hours and much extra town money being spent frivolously... its now over.
I have been criticized for not speaking much at the meeting and to that I will just say that A) this was a public hearing for concerned citizens and we were there to listen to them.
How do i view this whole process? Well 18 months ago we (as a total group) councilors gave perimeters of what we expected in this up coming contract and as the HR director told us last night, this was accomplished twice in 18 months.
Now I will admit that individual councilors had individual parts of the contract that they were concerned about, including myself, however reading the charter states that no individual councilor shall act alone in creating policy. As a group, we all stated that if we come to the table with a group package under 3.5% we would have a deal. In my business, my word means everything. I don't change negotiations after the fact and try to then leverage an even better deal- That's what lawyers do!
My father who owned a family business taught me one thing.. your only as good as your word. Look someone in the eye, tell them what you expect from them and what they expect from you and keep your word. I did that last night.
Next, let us look at the fact that the first year is a 0% cost of living however they received a lump sum of $860 because this was suppose to be done 18 months ago and there is no retro pay.
Second, this contract dollar wise has been in the budget already passed in March. For anyone who comes up and says gosh, darn now are taxes are going to go through the roof is not being genuine. Remember that we have a tax cap in this town, town side went up .18 cents this year and part of that .18 was this contract. The remainder of the following years will still be UNDER THE TAX CAP. Our charter mandates this!! The ADT and their followers want to scare people, they always have and always will.
Are we going through tough times, yes no doubt.. but to blame the worlds problems on this contract, come on.. Lets be real for once.
At the end of the meeting, I have called for a town wide hiring freeze and that it should take council to break that freeze. I also called for an Overtime freeze town wide as well. These two things could help us in trouble times a hell of alot more than trying to slam our fire dept. And in the end, we must now be ready for the next rounds of future contracts by identifying those areas were we need or feel must be changes, but keep in mind in 2011, with our tax cap, many issues will work themselves out naturally.
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19 comments:
Nicely put Brian.
I enjoyed our conversation @ Derryfest.
Keep up the good work.
Brian - please explain the tax cap in Derry. I understand that the budget can be reduced to lower the Town portion of the tax rate. Is this true?
Thanks for your approval of these contracts. It is important to see the forest from the trees on this ine. The ADT is a smoke screen, but losing ground. Keep doing what you are doing.....The Taxpayers did voice there opinions the other night. You have support in your decisons and will continue to have support. Keep up the good work you and 3 other councilors are doing. The others will just become part of Derry's history.......
They always say when all parties walk away from the table "unsatisfied" you probably have a pretty good deal.
I think that this contract needs to be viewed as a first step. The process here was broken many years ago with what appears to be shoddy work and negotiations on the part of the previous town councils and town administrators.
We've taken a step in the right direction and it was good to see citizens actully getting involved in the process of governing their town.
Let's hope this continues, and let's really take a hard look at all corners of town government and spending - just like the rest of the world is now looking at the financial markets. It is time to get back to basics and we need to stop leveraging the future. I cringe to think what a mess we are leaving for our children's generation to clean up!!!
BC,
Explain to me how you’re going to eliminate overtime pay. Are you going to send the Highway workers home when they reach the end of their day during a snowstorm and leave the roads unplowed? Or maybe we can send the firefights home in the middle of a fire. What about when a police officer is out sick or on a vacation day. Are we going to reduce our police protection? Great job, vote for a contract we can’t afford and eliminate services to make up for the difference
Thanks for the freezes.
A great idea in my opinion.
I do have one question, does the overtime freeze also apply to fire and police depts?
In other words, what you’re really saying is I don't speak up on any controversial issues in public and on the record, I just write about them on this blog.
Please don't freeze the Kleenex line, it looked like Ms. Fairbanks was going to cry when her wingman Brent voted against her.....Its only the begining of the end for her and Mr. Coyle....She always says, "Its what my constituents want." WELL THEY SHOULD HAVE SHOWN UP....AS PER NORMAL THEY DID NOT....One can only hope they do the same on election day...DON'T SHOW UP.......as Kevin put it, "I don't give a rats ass if this costs me votes." Please lets give him his wish.......PLEASE gets some candidates that support your views Brian so that the real work can begin ......
I think that both sides of the table were part in the give and take about as much as they could for this round of negotiations. This isn't the last fire contract ever and some work can be done in the future from both sides. I think that it was important that some of you kept your word to your HR guy and the Chief when they came in under the 3.5%. I know that it shows the other unions that they can deal with Larry and the dept head and make a deal. Good job!
anon 1:19,
In short, the tax cap is tied into the CPI index which is the rate of inflation. typically the CPI avg has been around 3.1-3.5%. So the town side budget can only increase by the prior years CPI or rate of inflation.
** no run away spending***
Many communities are now fighting to have their own tax caps such as Manchester, Bedford, Concord, and many more. We have had ours for 7+ years..
anon 11:43,
Don't go drastic on me.. I just propose that we really evalute our overtime budget numbers and really focus in on them. I'm not proposing anything drastic like no snow plowing, however lets see where we can save.. savings now could mean no layoffs later.
Poor Derry taxpayer,
We should scrunitze every overtime dollar here on in. I have stated in the past that Police is a dept that is critical no matter what econcomy we have and more so in a bad one. I just want to make sure that we look at all overtime.
Also, I brought these issues up but nobody else has said anything yet. It would need an approval from the council!
Anon 12:27,
Don't know why she would single out Brent?. He did hold his own though. Got to give him credit for that.
Cautioiusly hoping Mr. Carney is finally seeing the light ........!
What I do not understand is how we can guarantee employment and still pay high wages.
It used to be when someone worked for at a municipal or state job they were verbally guaranteed permanent employment. The unspoken stipulation was they were not paid the going rate for the job.
If I were negotiating the contract they would have to concede on either the going rate or permanent job.
One or the other.
Getting back to your answer to Anon 1:19 - why do taxes have to increase each year when the Town Council continues to spend beyond the taxpayers means? Is it possible to freeze the tax rate for a couple of years to let the taxpayers breath some relief?
Do me a favor if my house is on fire let it burn to the ground, I'm not just saying it I mean it. It would give me an easyway out of this town.
The fire, police and public works employees are way over paid in this town , if this was not true you would have a huge turnover and you don't.
As for the police if you got rid of the chief the turnover would go down , his pension is big enough let him go.
Questions or comments about the fire contracts or the firefighters Local may directed to:
http://local4392.blogspot.com/2008/10/town-council-approved-two-contracts.html
The ADT has a number of flaws in their presentation but the biggest flaw is the cost per citizen for DFD ambulance. Concord Fire treats and transports twice as many patients as DFD. Concord treats and transports three times more patients that are commuters(people that work in Concord but live else where). So the figure that the ADT folks came up with doesn't accurately reflect cost per citizen for either town. It is not a valid sample for comparison. Sampling is an important issue because it has such a large impact on the validity of your results and is so often misunderstood. Accurate sampling increases your confidence that your end result is a real difference and not just random chance.
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