Six-Month Long Town Salary Negotiations Finalized

The Town of Harrison will save $1 million in employee salaries for the 2010 budget year, but will pay almost all of it back between 2012 and 2015. The result of new contracts for each of the town's five unions that will allow the town to escape from this year's budget woes but will place that burden on future years.

The Harrison Town Board took a huge gamble last December, approving a budget with a $1 million gap, anticipating that negotiations with unions this year would cover it. Six months later, the town managed to cover that gap.

In separate contracts, the PBA, Harrison Firemen, CSEA and CSEA Foreman signed 3-year working contracts with the town. Union members from each union will not receive pay raises in 2010, will receive a 1 percent pay increase in 2011 and will receive a 3 percent raise in 2012, the same year they will begin to receive money back from this year's deferral. The Teamsters Union also signed a 1-year contract with the town.

The contracts will also eliminate the possibility of layoffs, unless there are "material adverse economic conditions." 

One of those conditions, according to Harrison Mayor/Supervisor Joan Walsh, would be if there isn't a new health care program put in place by the end of this summer. The town is hoping to save a substantial amount of money by again re-negotiating contracts with each union. Changing the health care plan could allow the town to pay out this year's deferrals without creating future tax increases, according to Walsh.

"That million dollar hole from the 2010 budget will still exist in 2011, and the only way we will be able to cover it is with changes in the health plan or staff reductions," said Walsh.

Joe Cannella, who led negotiations between the town and unions, said that although he would have liked to have completed a new health care plan before signing these contracts, changes to health care on a national level made such negotiations very difficult.

"Everybody would have preferred, I think, to deal with those issues right now," said Cannella. "We couldn't really deal with them and the unions acknowledged that."

Although town leaders have admitted that this may look like a short-term solution to what has become a long-term problem, most who spoke said that the move was in the best interest of the town. If this year's contract wasn't signed, the unions would have had the option of bringing negotiations to arbitration where, Cannella estimates, the town could have been forced to give workers as much as a four percent salary increase each year.

Instead, the unions chose to accept the deferments. 

"If they had actually forced the issue, and used the rights that they had as a matter of law, we would have potentially had an unqualified disaster in this town," said Cannella. "They have left money on the table, dramatically so."

Four of the five board members voted to approve the contracts. Councilman Pat Vetere voted against all of them, saying that the new deal could dig the town into an even bigger hole in the future.

"The deferrals, no layoffs," he said when asked why he was opposed. "Suppose two years from now the economy gets worse, where are we?"

Walsh said that the board's original goal was for union members to give-back the money and not defer it, but that after negotiations with unions that proved to be impossible.

"If you're not in the middle of the negotiations, you don't know what the gives and takes are, we stand by what he did," Walsh said of Cannella's work.

The town now has more negotiations to look forward to, as the board will try to cut health care costs before planning officially begins for next year's budget. The town currently budgets $9 million every year for health care, Walsh said that she expects to shave $1.5 to $2 million from that number with these negotiations.

If a new deal isn't written by Labor Day, Walsh would consider that an adverse economic condition, once again opening the door for possible layoffs.

"Unless there is an agreement on the health care plan that results in a substantial reduction in costs to the town, that will be considered a material adverse condition and the layoff provision will go out the window," she said.

Walsh emphasized that talks with unions and cost-cutting efforts are far from over. With more expenses now on the horizon, she said that the town has to focus on staying away from another tax increase.

"We hear from every side that our people here in Harrison can not weather another property tax increase," she said. "We must continue to be fiscally responsible and continue our vigilance in keeping our costs down and not expecting taxpayers to continue to foot the bill."

If they can do that, remains to be seen.