Union is out of touch with private sector reality
To the editor:
The Magic Pot of Money is an elusive thing that when we hear tales of waste and overspending we always have the idea that there is something in a budget that is going to appear that can save the day. If we go back in time three to five years that may have been the case.
Those budgets had items that were ripe for trimming. As you remember the city held the city portion of property taxes level up until this past summer after the state of Maine changed the funding formula. The changes to city operations in the past three years have been a huge commitment to be sure on the part of the City Manager, the past and current Councilors and every one of the dedicated city employees, but due to many long meetings and employees doing more work with less help, the citizens have been served at levels approaching the past. This is something to commend the entire team on for the effort put forth.
When I opened the paper and read about the union’s view on the way the employees have been treated, I suddenly realized that this was a letter to discredit the decisions and hard work that has been diligently done to protect the jobs of the city employees. The management team that has worked to offer as fair a package as we could given the reality of the loss of state funding.
As one of your City Council members it is my job to try to balance the needs of the many and the needs of the few, In this case the taxpayer vs. the employees. My view is that most citizens do not have a problem adequately compensating the city’s employees so they can live and prosper, but taxpayers also must watch their own household budget to make sure that they also can survive in this day and age. This is where the fair and equitable conversation began to take place in my own mind.
I personally know many seniors in the community that rely on Social Security for their whole existence. In fact one such lady who has had a home and paid taxes in PI since 1949, came to see me last week with a message of how will she be able to meet her own needs if we raise taxes yet again? Then there are my own friends who are the 30 something’s with young children and are early in their careers with mid- to lower-level job titles and huge child care expenses. One of my friends who has a state position has just recently got a 1 percent raise after four years. In this family’s case after paying higher insurance premiums in each of the last four years and electricity, insurance, gas, heating oil, food … this friend brings home less than $250 a week to contribute to the budget for a family of four.
Now I realize that these are only two of the 10,000ish citizens of Presque Isle, but their stories are not unique. It is this reality for our tax-paying citizens that I struggle with when the union does not accept temporary changes that could have saved $50,000 from the budget in the ending six months of 2013, and they somehow expect that the taxpayer to foot the bill.
Now it was the practice that 20 years ago that public employees had on average lower wages and were given higher benefits to compensate for the wage inequity with the private sector. At that time as a newly hired insurance agent, I was routinely selling family health insurance policies for $250 to $350 per month. I mention this because the union correctly states that they agreed to contract concessions on wages at that time to keep higher insurance benefits. That is true, but in the ensuing 20 years two things have happened: that $300ish family premium has become $1,500 per month, and in the past five years the city did a wage study for the purpose of comparing our employees to peer cities. After this study the employees had wage adjustments done to bring them up to comparable levels. Many employees received $3,000 a year increases in salary and some even as much as $8,000 or more. So today, our oldest employees who are on their highest wage steps, also get 90 percent of their family coverage paid for by the city. Of their $18,000 a year premiums on health insurance, you the taxpayer pay $17,000 of it. Our newer employees pay 50 percent of theirs and they also are not at the top of their salary range.
Now it is true that many of them are approaching retirement, but the city (you the taxpayer) really can’t afford this rate of payment toward this benefit any longer. My two taxpayer examples above can barely afford to pay even their own insurance, how do I sit and explain to them that they need to find more money from their budget to pay for a benefit that is so far out of step with modern insurance employee/employer agreements that it is incredible to even imagine.
It is this idea of “this is what we have had so the taxpayer must continue to support us in the manner we have become accustomed to,” which is really causing me to struggle. As the private sector jobs lost benefits and pensions, the union jobs have stayed even or have increased. This should have been looked at long ago to keep pace with what you have experienced in your own careers, but it was not, and it must be done now.
I know many families have cut back on everything from, eating out, cable TV, Internet, and gas, keeping cars longer, making due with older things around the house, and quality of food items, but for them this is a reality because they can choose to do less of those items to a point. They however cannot choose to pay fewer taxes! Once the city sends the bill it must be paid. If it is not, then eventually they will lose their home to the tax collector.
It is for this reason that when we negotiate with the union that we are not trying to demonize the employees and say they are the problem. Just the opposite we realize how valuable they are to the city and citizens, but after a 22 percent reduction in revenue from the state we just do not have the room in the budget to simply absorb more costs.
In the last budget we heard loud and clear that the citizens want a professional Fire Department, which is why I fought so hard to keep it that way. They also fully support the Police in their mission to protect us. Both departments have submitted budgets that have been scrubbed to minimize costs. In fact they are virtually flat. Our Public Works and other departments also have kept requests to a minimum to help keep costs to taxpayers consistent.
The role of the Assistant City Manager is an often targeted as wasteful spending. Actually this is an unfortunately named job, he does not do any City Manager duties, in fact he oversees three different roles in the city that previously were management positions. We reduced three highly compensated positions and consolidated them under Martin’s hat. This has actually saved the city both salary and benefits.
I also want to address the new fire truck. Our old truck a 1987 model after 26 years of corrosion is simply rusted so badly it cannot be repaired. The Maine Military Authority came and looked at it for refurbishment, but declined to take it on as it was too far gone and too expensive to fix vs. the cost of replacement. We also looked at several used trucks but due to the cost of retrofitting them and replacing pumps and engines to make them reliable, the cost was at nearly 70 percent of the new truck. The new truck also replaces two of our current units, making our fleet smaller and allowing us to respond with only one vehicle to accidents. I understand the unpopularity of buying a new truck, and I was the one who first proposed to look for a used one, but at the end of the day after the research was done I believe that this was the best long term decision we could make.
It is not an overspending problem in our budget, it is that we will experience another nearly $700,000 reduction in state aid in 2014. If this change in funding had happened over a longer period than just six months we could have had time to be even more creative. We as a council are talking to Caribou to combine some services with them which may save us future dollars but they will not happen overnight. We are most certainly working to come up with a good solid plan to live within our new budget constraints, but it will take time. It is this situation that caused us to reach out to the unions and ask them to voluntarily take some cuts to help share in the loss we have experienced. This is the reality we need to deal with, and one that cannot be just passed along to city’s taxpayers.
So, if there is a magic pot of money, I don’t know where to find it, I wish I did! Please realize that I understand both sides but also realize that in the end, my fellow councilors and I must try to be equitable across the board and it is likely both the taxpayer and the employee with have an impact.
Craig R Green
Presque Isle
