We support the council’s decision last week to keep its word to its non-union employees.
Two excellent arguments were clear in the discussion. First, voiced most clearly by Councilor Ron Rodgers, the City Council made a commitment via resolution last year to extend the same raises to non-union personnel that it gave to the city’s general employees, who are represented by a union.
While it is not an official contract, it still represents a commitment. We find this argument most persuasive. The city is not currently in an emergency situation, although it was last fall and it is likely to be again.
This, along with city officials’ statements that the city needs to hold the line, is what prompts us to support a proposal to freeze non-union wages, a savings of nearly $18,000. For the time being, it can honor the commitment, and we respect this. {{more}
Second, non-represented employees raised a case for retention, concerned that supervisory employees could take other jobs.
Honoring the commitment this year and revisiting wages and insurance premiums in the future may help keep them involved in hunting solutions, as they have already done so well, and keep them in Sweet Home at a time when Mayor Craig Fentiman maintains stability in management is important.
This group of managers have recommended and taken pay freezes in the past. City Manager Craig Martin took one last year and he offered to take one again this year. A couple of councilors offered up their small stipends, for what they’re worth.
That said, we look cautiously toward the future. The councilors who raised this issue and then voted not to rescind the raises, as well as the councilors who voted to freeze wages, had an important point.
Mike Hall, who voted not to rescind the raises and freeze wages, articulated the relationship between the public and public employees, which is at the heart of the issue. He pays some 25 employees, and they, in turn, pay city employees. Hall’s employees didn’t get raises this year.
When utility employees receive raises, it comes with an increase in utility rates. This is happening during trying times when many of the folks footing the bill haven’t received commensurate raises and many are out of work. Folks in that position effectively suffer a decrease in buying power while the folks they’re paying to do very important work receive raises that help them offset the rising cost of living. We don’t have it quantified, but anecdotally speaking, it seems common. A councilor or two is actually in this position.
The resources that citizens can provide to fund city operations (or Fire and Ambulance District or School District or Cemetery District) appear to be dwindling. That doesn’t leave much room to increase public expenditures.
This proposal really had nothing to do with sending a message to the community, as some folks suggested. It had to do with being frugal at a time when resources are becoming scarce. That scarcity isn’t likely to go away any time soon.
City employees need to face the reality many other residents, including other local public emplyees, live with daily: that things are bad economically. The assumption that the funding faucet can simply be turned on to provide wage increases at will is far from the truth.
Yes, we believe that the council did the right thing in honoring its commitment. But city employees and their union leaders need to consider, if things do not improve economically in the near future, whether they are spending their political capital wisely in accepting raises while everyone else is hurting.