Again, thank you very much to those that took the time to join the negotiation meeting yesterday. The City Manager was going to join us, but apparently she had rehearsals to attend to ahead of the Budget Hearing.
We are still sifting through all the different bits of the latest proposals to see what is actually being offered and what is being taken away. The proposals have the removed or changed language in strike through so we have to carefully read everything so we don’t lose something by accident. The three proposals were posted yesterday if you want to see for yourself.
During the negotiation meeting the City changed up a few things verbally that sound good but need careful comparison against what we would give up in the process. The verbal proposal was to change the wage offer to 4% restoration staring October followed by a 3% COLA next October. That *does* sound good, but many other things in the proposal are going to make those amounts turn out not so great, things like increased health care costs, decreased health benefits, decreased pension benefits, and no merit increases.
And then the Budget Hearing….
This is page 37 of the City Manager’s presentation last night. This page specifically is interesting for two reasons:
First, bullet point number two…. how do you get better if you aren’t offering a ‘pay-for-performance’ in your benefit package. If your evaluation system is only good-bad with no increase in pay for good why is anyone going to do anything more than exactly what the job description says? You are not offering the carrot for improvement.
Second, bullet point number four… Strengthen the Professional Part Time Concept? Is this the future of employment in the City of Hollywood? Are we all supposed to become Part Time Professionals? Now one of the items in the proposed contract makes a bit more sense…. Part-Time positions, after they pass their almost two-year probationary period, will become eligible for a 457 Plan (same idea as the private sector 401k).
Stay Tuned, there is a lot more to come.
P.S…. we still don’t have anything new about the E-911 merge. There have been some meetings in the past few days but information from those meetings is confusing or contradictory or both. We’ll share more as it’s available.