Board of Aldermen 1-02-2020 Page 9
and retaining Police Officers who are not covered under this contract. But really for me the reason that |
think that we should just approve this tonight is because as | look at the numbers for what the salary
increases would be per year, the difference between a 2% increase for these 16 employees versus a 3%
increase for the employees which the contract offers them is about $10,000.00 per year, a little over
$10,000.00 per year.
The Police Department’s Budget is $31 million dollars per year; | think this can easily be absorbed within
the budget and | trust that the Commissioners and the Chief will find a way to do that without coming back
and increasing their budget more than what we are going to have to ask them, the small amount we are
going to have to ask them to increase their budget in the future.
The other thing | would say is that you know the healthcare costs are factored into that; the healthcare
costs are going to go up regardless of what this contract is. That is a much bigger issue that we need to
work on and tackle, but given the limited scope of this contract, | think it is fair based in, like we said, like
the Chief said, based on the benefits that other people within the Department receive. | am sympathetic to
the Department Heads who are in the process of negotiating with different Collective Bargaining Units. |
think that is something that we have also talked about at the Board of Aldermen as you know how we can
be more uniform across the board for folks. But again, this contract is not going to fix that. We are going to
have to, as Alderman Dowd always tells us, we are going to have to take a look at every contract as it
comes before us on whether we can afford it. Although | respect the Mayor’s position on everything, | will
support this contract moving forward.
Alderman Clemons
Thank you. This Resolution is R-18-102, R-18-102. This came to the Board in 2018. We are in 2020; to
say that there hasn’t been enough discussion on this contract is just plain false. How can that be? How
can something that has been on the table and back and forth in different reiterations, coming to us in
different forms and shapes and to the Budget Committee and everything else. How can we say that it
needs to be discussed more? It doesn’t need to be discussed more. We had a version of it which | actually
preferred and this Board made the decision to go along with the Mayor and not approve that version, which
is fine. We tabled this and they came back with a different version; and then even that version was
changed on the night that we took it up at the Budget Meeting.
As my colleague just stated, the difference in price or cost is $10,000.00. In the grand scheme of a $250
million dollar plus budget, if that is too much to ask, then we really shouldn’t soend money on anything
moving forward. Because if we can’t afford $10 grand, then we need to step back and we need to look and
really dig deep. But see | don’t think that that’s the case. | am saying this because why was one contract
which had a 3% raise not vetoed, but this one is? If the problem was cost, the both of those should have
been in front of us tonight. So | am not sure where the disconnect is but | am going to support these
employees because they deserve to have a contract. These are 16 men and women that serve this City
well, that have been doing their job without a contract since July of 2018. They’ve been numerous
iterations of this, it has been sitting, going back and forth between the Budget Committee and the Board of
Aldermen and the Mayor’s Office and a number of different places for years, literally years. Now is the time
to act and | hope you all support me in overriding the Mayor's Veto.
Alderman Klee
Thank you. | think | am just going to basically be saying me too. And | do want to echo what Alderman
Tencza and Alderman Clemons said and in some cases kind of what Alderman Jette said. | do agree with
what you said about the sick leave. That does bother me, | think it is time for us to kind of, if what we want
to do is go back to what they had said about the 2003, we do need to hold our feet to the fire. But when |
look at this contract and the previous contract for the Police, what Alderman Clemons said was the point
that | was going to make when | first raised my hand, and that this started in Fiscal Year 2018. We first
heard about this and the word “3% raise” my hackles went up and | went, “I’m Social Security and | got a
1.6% raise this year’ and that was a big one because we haven’t seen that big one in a long time.
