Note: Charles Sampson, the president of the Derby Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen, sent this statement in response to a Valley Indy question about two union contracts approved by the city’s legislative body June 24. The Valley Indy asked for permission to run the response as a guest column. Click here for the accompanying story.
In regard to the Police Department contract: the information made available to us by Chief Narowski in regard to all of the issues discussed in negotiations, the concessions on the part of the Police Union, the savings for the City over the life of the contract, lead the board to approve this contract.
As (Mayor Dziekan’s Chief of Staff) Drew (Baklik) stated, people tend to focus on a single issue in the contract, and that is raises.
If we focused solely on that point, the raises over the life of the contract — which are estimated to be less than the Consumer Product Index (cost of living) averaged of the next few years — are a good deal for the City.
There were a number of other benefits for both the Police Union and the City that will accommodate both parties, and had additional monetary and administrative saving over the life of this contract.
Looking at the big picture, the majority of the board felt that this contract was in the best interest of the City to approve.
In regard to the teacher’s contract, we actually had a very tough time with realizing the value as evident with the Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen’s deliberation over this one taking an hour.
The board recognizes the accomplishments of the faculty over the past years and what they have done to raise the standards in all of the schools throughout this city.
On the other hand, we did believe that the raises were above the norm for the fiscal time that the City is in. Yet, we did not want to focus our decision on a single issue of the contract. We wanted to take into consideration all aspects of the contract.
I will say that the Teacher’s Union did make multiple concessions that would lessen the cost factor of this contract to the City, and for that we are appreciative.
Another issue that we struggled with was that this contract was negotiated for approximately a year, signed by the Teacher’s Union and the School’s negotiating team in November of 2018, yet not brought to the Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen until early June of this year.
This put the contract in the forefront of the fiscal crisis we are currently facing.
The deciding factors that we looked at included Superintendent Conway’s plan to assist in those savings to the City, and had this contract come before this board in a timely fashion, I believe due to the overall content of the contract, the board would have approved it.
We have confidence in Superintendent Conway and the Teacher’s Union to work together during this crisis to assist the City further.
I will say that our only other option would have been to vote no on each of these and bear the immediate cost of that action. Our opinion is that this would have put both of these contracts into arbitration.
Based on a number of factors, I feel that the City would have seen little reward for this action. I personally feel that the Police contract would have remained close to what we voted on, and the Teacher’s contract would have been a flip of the coin.
Yet the City would have been looking at another immediate cost for arbitration that could have mounted to as much as $140,000.
This City does have an uphill battle, but we must fund those aspects that keep people coming here.
We need a school system that continues to excel with the excellent teachers we have, and a public safety system that continues to serve the citizens with honor, courage, and compassion.
The men and women covered by these contracts exemplify these qualities, and we have faith in our Department Heads to make the tough decisions to keep the overall budgets of their respective departments consistent with the state of the City.
Charles Sampson, President
Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen
