Municipal employees affected by shutdown days
By Kathy McCarty
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — Tuesday marked the first of two shutdown days in November for the Solid Waste Department, with additional dates set for the Public Works Department and Northern Maine Regional Airport between now and the end of the month.
City Manager Jim Bennett provided details of the shutdown dates during the manager’s report segment of Monday’s City Council meeting. In addition to yesterday, Solid Waste will also be closed on Tuesday, Nov. 19. The landfill and recycling center will also be closed on the two days listed. Pay-As-You-Throw trash collection will still take place as scheduled. There will be no interruption in collection.
Public Works will be closed Wednesdays, Nov. 6 and Nov. 20, but in the event of adverse weather, those dates would be rescheduled.
The airport dates fall the week of Nov. 4 and the week of Nov. 18. Flights will not be affected.
“Shutdowns will occur this week and two weeks from now,” said Bennett, noting there’s been some confusion about what’s going on.
In an effort to “capture for citizens where we’re at and why these choices are being made,” Bennett explained how the decision to implement shutdown days came about.
“We had our budget planned, but in the last four or five months, when the state Legislature adopted the state budget, we found we had about $450,000 less” funding from the state, said Bennett, adding, as a percentage of the city’s budget, “we were among the worst impacted in the state.”
Between use of reserve funds and increased taxes passed on to taxpayers, Bennett said that still left the city over $50,000 short of a balanced municipal budget for 2013.
“We’ve had to pass that along to employees in three ways. First was through asking those hired prior to 1996 to move to the same level for health insurance as those hired after 1996. Then we asked all employees to take one shutdown day the Friday before Labor Day. All employees — salaried or otherwise — lost 20 percent of their pay” for that week, said Bennett. “For those hired after 1996, we asked them to forfeit 1 percent of their retirement pay for six months.”
Bennett said all employees have been affected by the changes.
“Six of the unions represented by the Teamsters didn’t agree to changes. So what we’ve done and said we’d do is make adjustments to work conditions or the places where employees work that’s consistent with their work and state rules, which requires us to look at shutdown days,” he said.
“Another option is consider laying someone off. That’s not a choice we wanted to make but unfortunately we have between now and the end of December to make choices,” said Bennett.
Bennett said non-union decisions saved the city about $20,000.
He said these plans have had no impact with the fire department and none with the police sergeants. In addition, many city employees/offices have been reduced to a 37.5-hour work week.
“I’m disappointed we’re here. I know you’d like to have services as citizens, but at the end of the day, I’m sure you don’t have insurance that allows you to pay only $19 a month (a reference to what some city employees had been paying for their health insurance, prior to recent changes). I’m certain you’d want it more equitable,” said Bennett.
Councilor Craig Green said it was “easy to sit at home or hear snips and pieces of an argument or story” and come to a conclusion, “but at the end of the day it has to be what works for city government.”
“It’s not just us or the employees, it’s everyone. Citizens on Social Security, state employees with a 1 percent raise this past spring — the first in four years and no step increases. When I look at how it impacts the budgets of people living in the community, that’s the other side of the equation. We have community members who are impacted more,” said Green. “That’s a tremendous thing to bear.”
