Board of Aldermen
February 23, 2016 Page 13
Alderman Moriarty
| may be wrong because | often am but I'll suggest a couple of things. The last time | had a conversation with,
it was off the record but it was with one of the managers in the police department, every single one of the
employees who left was due to retirement. Let me rephrase that. There were twenty people that we were
talking about within this bargaining unit that left and not one single one of these policemen left due to a
reduction in pay or that they weren't getting paid enough. Every single one of them left due to retirement. It is
a fair portrayal to say that in a large...most, if not all of the employees within the police department does not
leave because of higher pay they leave because they are retiring. It is also a fair portrayal to characterize our
police department as extremely high quality and one of the best in the country, they are very ethical. People
look forward to working here to the extent such that there are often times 200 people applying for a handful of
positions. Combine the two things, one; people want to move here and work here and policemen want to work
in this department to such an extent that there are 200 to 4 and once they get here they don’t get here until
they retire. We do not have a problem retaining police; that is a fallacy. The second thing, now let’s get back
to the simplicity of the contract, we can vote no and it can be rejected and this “me too” clause that everyone is
referring to is on page 27, it’s Article 28 and it’s a paragraph that says that “however in the event subordinates
receive a higher cost of lean raise then the employees covered by this agreement the same percentage
increase shall also be extended to the bargaining unit.” There is a paragraph in this particular contract that
makes it mutually exclusive, it implies a constraint. If we vote no based on the numbers, we are not allowed to
vote based on the paragraph itself but we are allowed to vote no based on the numbers. If we reject the
contract simply because of business and the affordability of it, it is not our problem for them to figure out how to
solve it. The police commissioners will have to realize that they will not be able to include that paragraph, they
will have to remove that paragraph in order to make the numbers meet our concerns. We have the ability to
vote no and make our decision on the vote be purely cost because we can only vote on cost items. We, the
Board of Aldermen, can retain our authority to vote no and it will indeed end up in a savings contrary to what
other Aldermen might have suggested earlier.
Alderman Schoneman
| want to add that although we did vote unanimously at the Budget Review Committee meeting, it was not a
good feeling vote. | share the view that this contract is not really good, it’s not. | also share the view that it is
inevitable and it sends us into a very difficult position when it comes to budget time. The police department
has been good in the past at hitting the number they have been assigned. In fact, they were very good at it
last year and we bumped them up to reward them for that and | don’t think that was a wise thing to do. We
even paid them more than they were requesting initially. Here we are heading into a season where they are
asking for 2.5% and that’s the guidance that they have been given. We’ve already heard that schools are
going to around 2.0% and everyone else is 1.3%. There’s no way the city overall can meet that 1.3% spending
cap with those kinds of percentages that exceed when everyone else is 1.3% without cutting services
somewhere. It brings me back to the problem or to what Mayor Lozeau pointed out in last years’ budget
meeting where we saw taxes ramping up, we saw salaries ramping up, we saw pensions ramping up and we
saw services flat-lined. That is a picture of decreasing value, costs go up and services stay the same. If value
is defined as you get what for what you spend as the cost of that goes up and the services stay flat-lined the
value is decreasing. We are continuing that trend. To approve this contract continues and heads us deeper
into that direction, nevertheless, it does seem to be inevitable for the reasons that were discussed. | want to
point out that | am in agreement with Alderman Moriarty that there is no turnover to the best of knowledge for
anything other than retirement. The issue was not a potential loss of police employees on the past contracts, it
was the fact that there were fewer applicants than we had in the past and in order to keep the stack as high as
it was and as rich as it was we wanted to make sure that we drew the best applicants but there is no danger of
turnover and to pretend that there is | think is certainly unwise. These contracts are all problematic; every
single one of them with the exception of maybe the para’s that we talked about earlier and the food service.
We are simply spending too much money, we are spending more than taxpayers have allotted and certainly
more than they are getting in their own increases on their own private sector salaries and we are heading
towards a significant problem. It did pass unanimously but sadly | must say because we are heading further
