Derby City Hall (Wikimedia Commons)
DERBY — Four days after emerging from the most problematic budget cycle in a decade, the city’s Board of Aldermen approved new, multi-year contracts for police officers and teachers June 24.
Here is a rundown of the labor agreements, followed by reactions from Derby officials:
Derby BOE/Derby Education Association Union Contract
The teachers’ union contract went into effect July 1. It is a three-year contract.
According to school officials:
Teachers get a 2.25 percent raise in the first year of the contract, which covers July 1, 2019 until June 30, 2020.
Teachers get a 2.62 percent raise in the second year of the contract, which covers July 1, 2020 until June 30, 2021.
Teachers get a 3.38 percent raise in the third year of the contract, which covers July 1, 2021 until June 30, 2022.
The board approved the contract unanimously, with Alderman Joe DiMartino (a high school softball coach who receives a stipend) recusing.
Click the play button below to listen to Alicia Olenoski, the president of the Derby Education Association, describe the contract during the public comment portion of the June 24 Aldermen/Alderwomen meeting:
On June 20 the tax board allocated $18.6 million for Derby schools, a zero-percent year-to-year increase. It is the second year in a row the tax board has flat-funded the school system.
How the school district will absorb the pay increases with no additional funding from the city remains to be seen.
During last Monday’s Aldermen-Alderwomen meeting, Charles Sampson, president of the board, said officials were “under the impression that a vote to approve the teachers’ contract will cause the district to relook at its budget, but that any cuts will not have a meaningful impact to the students’ education.”
The Valley Indy reached out to Derby school board chairman Jim Gildea for comment.
“The Board of Education was successfully able to negotiate a contract that came in with lower than average settlements and in fact at the time amongst the lowest in the state,” Gildea said in an email.
“Having received no increase in City funds is certainly a tough hurdle as teachers are what drives any school system and we will struggle to find the money to fund the increases,” he said.
“The question becomes what difficult cuts or choices do we have to make and still try to move the school system forward while at the same time making it a school system that attracts people and investment into our town. That is becoming increasingly more difficult,” Gildea said.
A copy of the contract approved by the Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen is embedded below.
It contains information on class sizes, vacation schedules, and health plan contributions. Salary information is included on pages 50 through 53.
Scroll down to continue reading this story.
Contract: Derby Education Association, 2019 – 2022 by The Valley Indy on Scribd
Police Union Local # 1376 of Council #4 AFSCME
The police contract approved June 24 covers six years, actually starting last year on July 1, 2018.
Police officers received a 2 percent hourly pay increase on July 1.
Police officers will receive a 2 percent hourly pay increase on July 1, 2020.
Police officers will receive a 2.25 percent hourly pay increase on July 1, 2021.
Police officers will receive a 2.25 percent hourly pay increase on July 1 2022.
Police officers will receive a 2.5 percent hourly pay increase on July 1, 2023.
The contract expires June 30, 2024.
Patrol officers’ hourly pay varies depending on experience. There are five levels. “Patrolman 1” is an officer who has been on the job between one and 24 months. “Patrolman 5” is an officer with between 72 and 84 months on the job.
The hourly pay rate for police as of this writing (June 26, 2019) was as follows:
Patrolman 1: $30.36 per hour
Patrolman 2: $32.40
Patrolman 3: $34.11
Patrolman 4: $35.79
Patrolman 5: $37.57
Detective: $39.35
Sergeant: $41.23
Lieutenant: $43.20
The officers work a minimum of 40 hours per week.
On July 1, 2023, the last year of the contract, the hourly pay rate will be:
Patrolman 1: $33.85
Patrolman 2: $36.24
Patrolman 3: $38.03
Patrolman 4: $39.90
Patrolman 5: $41.89
Detective: $43.87
Sergeant: $45.97
Lieutenant: $48.17
So, the officers’ hourly pay will have increased 11 percent from now until July 1, 2023. A rookie’s pay will increase from $30.36 to $33.85 per hour.
The officers will be contributing more toward their health insurance in every year of the contract. It will also take longer for new officers to receive patrolman 5 pay.
The Board of Aldermen/Alderwomen approved the police contract June 24 by a 5 – 1 vote with Alderman Thomas Donofrio, a Derby police officer, recusing.
First Ward Alderwoman Barbara DeGennaro voted no, saying she had issues with the contract’s duration and the fact other city union contracts did not have the same pay increases.
“I feel that some of the other contracts, they took their zero percent,” she said. “(They) were asked to take a zero percent.”
In an email, DeGennaro said she was concerned about the contract’s first year (2018), which included a one-time stipend for officers. “There was no zero increase. No other union contracts as they exist have been given that,” she said.
“It’s certainly not that I don’t know what you do every day, because for those who know me for a long time sitting on this board, I will be the first one to defend police officers,” she said.
The previous police contract was for five years, according to Derby Police Chief Gerald Narowski.
The contract is embedded below. The articles continues after the document.
Derby Police Union Contract by The Valley Indy on Scribd
Timing
The pay raises and contract approvals happened four days after the Derby Board of Apportionment adopted a 2019 – 2020 budget that carries a 2.5 mill-rate increase.
A single-family house assessed at $130,000 will pay an additional $325 in taxes next year.
In May, the city’s WPCA voted to raise sewer rates for the average house $30 to $37.
That is in addition to the annual $257 WPCA capital fee single-family house owners are paying in connection to a 2014 sewer repair referendum voters approved.
The mill rate increase adopted by the tax board in June was caused in part, officials said, by Derby finance folks who mistakenly double counted education grants from the state — meaning revenue that was budgeted for never arrived, creating a multi-million dollar budget hole.
The Valley Indy asked the police chief, the Board of Aldermen and the mayor’s office why the city is approved the raises instead of cutting spending.
Those officials said the contracts were negotiated in large part before this year’s budget cycle, and that the city feared rejecting the contracts would send the contracts to an arbitrator, where taxpayers risked spending even more money.
“I can say that outside of contractual obligations, spending has already been cut to the bone and we are running lean as a city overall,” Andrew Baklik, Mayor Rich Dziekan’s chief of staff, said in an email.
“City Hall non-union personnel (department heads) unanimously agreed to zero pay increases this year and we are doing our part to be fiscally responsible with the day-to-day operations of the city,” Baklik said.
“There is a fine line between cuts that make sense and those that will impact the services to the residents in a noticeably negative way. We are looking into abbreviated hours and other measures to save taxpayer money wherever possible,” he said.
Police Chief Narowksi said negotiations on the contract began long before the budget mistakes were known, and that the tax board had put aside money knowing the contract was being negotiated.
The tax board was aware of the police union negotiations and budgeted accordingly, the chief said.
The chief worked with the tax board in public during two budget cycles to advise the board to put extra money away anticipating the wage increases, which the board obliged.
In addition, the union agreed to several points that will save taxpayers money in the long run, especially in areas such as workers compensation.
File Photo
(From left) Charles Sampson, Chief Gerald Narowski, and Schools Superintendent Matthew Conway.
Narowski said if the Aldermen/Alderwomen had rejected the contract, it would have gone to arbitration. The process itself is costly, the chief said, and the end result would have likely resulted in larger wage increases.
“The contract negotiations between the City and the Police Union began in early 2018 and continued into late spring of 2019, long before the current financial issues,” Narowski said. “The resulting collective bargaining agreement is fair and beneficial to both parties and includes general wage increases that are below those that would be mandated if the parties were to proceed to arbitration.
“This contract is fiscally responsible and includes union concessions along with both short term and long term cost savings,” Narowski said.
Mayor Rich Dziekan and Sam Pollastro, a member of both the tax board and the police commission, were involved in the police contractions negotiations for the city.
Sampson, the Aldermanic president, said the city made the best deal possible under the circumstances.
“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,” Sampson said in an email. “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.”
Click this link to read a statement from Sampson detailing his position on the two contracts.
Before voting on the teacher and police union contracts June 24, the Aldermen and Alderwomen discussed the documents during a 2‑hour executive session, a type of meeting closed to the public.
The closed meeting is allowed under state open government laws, because a contract was being discussed.
In addition to Derby’s legislative body, those included in the executive sessions included corporation counsel Vin Marino, Baklik, and City Treasurer Keith McLiverty.
Chief Narowski and Deputy Chief Scott Todd were present in the executive session discussion about the police contract.
Superintendent Matthew Conway was in the executive session for the teacher contract discussion.
