Board of Aldermen 1-02-2020 Page 5
One issue | would like to address is the point regarding statements made by the Police Department that
they had not been told about the problem of healthcare costs before negotiations are not accurate. These
statements were accurate; the UFPO Contract which is in front of you tonight has been outstanding for over
a year and a half. I’ve been in front of you all five other times. We've been given guidance from the Mayor
and from the Aldermen many times, never once have we discussed the cost of healthcare concerning this
contact with the exception of the last Aldermen Meeting.
Regarding the Supervisor’s Contract which was recently approved; submission to the Board of Aldermen
was 12/19/2019. The contract negotiations were finalized on August 28, 2019, the Union voted to approve
33 to nothing on 9/8/2019. The contact was red-lined, finalized on roughly October 17". It was sent to
CFO Griffin shortly thereafter, we received the costing back from the City on November 12". A week later
representatives from the Mayor’s Office came to the Commissioners Meeting and spoke about the sick
buyout and the preferred raises. Nothing was said at that meeting that night about issues involving
healthcare costs and the impact that this would have on the overall City Budget.
General statements made at State of the City speeches or City Budget speeches that healthcare is an
issue for us moving forward does not really qualify to me as direction on how we negotiate contracts or
what percentages should be. Furthermore, regarding the knowledge of a 19% increase in our healthcare
budget is not really a fair statement due to the way our budget is prepared. The benefits are removed from
the budget calculation of percentage increases, therefore we did not analyze the benefits, pension or FICA,
Medicaid accounts. The budget calculation in the management for health benefits for the Police
Department are not done by the PD Financial Services Division, they are managed by the City.
The second point I’d like to discuss is the point when the Police Commission re-submitted the contract, we
did not simply remove unused sick time buyout provisions as requested. Instead we raised the wage
increase from 9.5 to 11.25% over the four years. I’d like to address this issue by stating that | have been in
front of you five times. When | initially proposed this contract in front of you, | was operating under the
guidance of the Mayor's wishes to stay with under the proposed spending cap. | was able to do that using
creative methods in which | have done for two other contracts which were both approved. The night |
submitted this the first time, there were some issues involving other City Employees that came to fruition as
a result the contract was tabled.
| was asked to reach a compromise; come back, talk to them, reach a compromise, | did that. | came back
with a sick buyout program that was half of what every other member of my Police Department was
receiving. They agreed to do so; they worked with me. | again proposed that to you, it was accepted
through the Budget Review Process. It was stalled again at the Full Aldermen Meeting due to some
concerns and issues that came up that it was not enough; sick buy out programs result in long-term,
unknown costs to the City and are not good. | was told by several Aldermen that they would consider wage
increases much better than they would like to see the sick buy out programs. | was told by the Mayor at a
meeting that he believes we should pay the employees more, not use a sick buyout program.
So | went back to the table and we came back with a compromise and we took the majority of the sick
buyout program away. So the program that every employee in my PD has with the exception of members
of this Union are no longer able to use that. Instead we gave up that program with the exception of
changing just retirement to retirement and resignation after 15 years. This was consistent with other
contracts in the City and it is 5 years more than those contracts; they can resign after 10 years and get their
sick buy out packages. For us itis 15 years and it currently affects one employee.
As a result of being asked to look at increasing the wages as opposed to using a sick buyout program, |
went back to them and we did that. We came back with wage increases which | thought were very
reasonable. We did, in fact, go from 9.5 to 11.25 over the life of the contract. | did that based on what you
asked me to do. That contract we are talking about 1.75% over four years. That’s less than half a per cent
per year, for these people. You asked me to come back with wage increases because they gave up that
very lucrative sick buyout program that had future unknown costs to the City. They did that, they did it
willingly and | came back then with a 1.75 increase over four years; again that’s less than “2%.
