Council Workshop Meeting 10/16/2006

Everyone has "Technical difficulties" from time to time. This site is no exception. Sorry for the delay on this article, I had problems getting anything posted on here for a few days. Hopefully that is now resolved.

I am not a trained sport commentator so I don't think I am qualified to cover the various conflicts that erupted at the Workshop meeting on October 16th. Tempers flared, blood boiled, and it actually looked like it might come to blows in a few cases. Neither side was innocent in all of that. However, I will leave the "blow by blow" to others.

When I arrived at the meeting the music was coming through the divider from the exercise class next door. Comically I wondered if the meeting would be held to the beat, "Music to politic by". The music seemed to die down as the meeting got underway. The entire Council was present with the exception of Councilman Corcoran.

There were approximately 40 residents in attendance when the meeting started. I didn't notice what the room's capacity was but it appeared to me to be about the same as the Council Chambers (if not less). Since the election, we have had great turnouts at the regularly scheduled Council Meetings. However, Committee Meetings, Special Council Meetings, etc, have all been well within the limits of the Council Chamber capacity. I would have thought this meeting, being a "Workshop" could have been scheduled in the Chambers based on past attendance of other "special" meetings and the like. My guess is that the Mayor and others decided to play it safe due to the injunction from the Judge hearing the Sunshine Law violation case.

The meeting started with a proposal presented by Councilman Knode. It was a compromise effort. At one point Councilman Knode said "We are here to compromise, we are here to negotiate, this is a starting point". It was a real compromise effort on some of the issues and an excellent starting point. The compromise changes included:

• The elimination of the Salary cut to the Chief of Police
• The elimination of the Salary cut to the City Clerk
• The elimination of the Procurement Officer position
• Adding the 3% Cost of Living (COLA) increase to Police Sergeants

This was funded by the elimination of the Procurement Officer position as well as taking half of the costs budgeted for a City Administrator position as it is highly unlikely that position would be filled before December (apparently we have not been interviewing for this position since the April election (if someone knows otherwise, please let me know)).

Since the Budget was originally voted down in July, there has been no meetings that addressed the differences the Council had in General Revenue Budget. A real effort was made to compromise and work together to work out issues with the Capital Improvements budget back in August. As a result the Capital Improvements Budget passed unanimously, while the General Revenue Budget failed. This looked to me like a real effort was finally being made to address part of the General Revenue Budget in the same way.

Councilman May asked that they attempt to take some "baby steps" and figure out the areas they can all agree on so that they could then focus on the differences. One of those areas was the Health and Rabies officer position. The Budget proposal includes the hiring of a Health and Rabies officer for Overland. All of the Council seemed to agree with this provision.

The original proposal was to severely cut the salaries of the Chief of Police and the City Clerk. The new proposal eliminates those cuts, but freezes their salaries this year. Councilman O'Connell raised an issue with this. He felt that they did not get a pay increase last year, so they should get one this year.

Councilman O'Connell originally suggested several meetings back that a 3% pay increase was not enough since the employees did not receive a pay raise last year. He wanted to see a 6% increase for the employees. At this meeting he offered to compromise to 4%, and wanted that to apply to all employees, supervisors or otherwise, as well as the Chief of Police and the City Clerk.

I don't think this is going far enough to meet in the middle. Having been a union member for years I can understand where Mr. O'Connell is coming from, but I don't think this is reasonable in comparison to the compromise presented. The compromise was a reasonable effort to address the pay issues of the General Revenue Budget. No one gets a pay cut, the useless procurement officer position is removed, and those hard working Sergeants at the Overland PD get the same COLA increase as the rest of the City employees.

The "white shirts" at the police department, as well as the department heads at City Hall do not get this raise. Though I think we all agree that these people are hard working professionals who do an excellent job for Overland, we do have to face the fact that the City cannot move forward and include these pay raises this year.

I worked in a Union job for 4 years, and received one pay raise. I worked in another job for 5 years and received 2 pay raises, and another for 3 gave me no pay raise. Outside of specific contract provisions (like the first 4-5 years of most union contracts, or the step raise programs in many government jobs) I don't know of any job that sees a pay raise every year. It is true that our cost of living tends to go up annually, but so does the cost of operation for cities and companies alike. There are only so many dollars to go around and I think most of us can agree that while they are not overpaid, our supervisory personnel and department heads are well paid.

Agreeing to limit the pay raise to non-supervisory personnel with the exception of the Sergeants on the Police force was a reasonable compromise effort. The key to compromise is that you have to be willing to give alittle to get alittle. The budget cannot be passed unless both sides make this attempt equally.

There is another side to this issue. When people took these various positions, they were told they would be receiving a 2 1/2% pay raise annually, and COLA increased as needed. Last year those step raises were frozen due to budget concerns, now it is happening again this year. When employers start taking away things that were promised to employees, good employees tend to start looking elsewhere for work.

However, when there are differences between elected officials on something like the budget, the only way to move forward is to compromise. In this case, we are effectively asking the leadership at the Police Department and City Hall to "take one for the team". This time around, it seems reasonable, but if this becomes the norm we are going to end up losing our best and brightest.

The compromise proposal appeared to be a reasonable effort to resolve a good portion of issues both sides have with the budget proposal. If they could have all agreed with this proposal they could have focused on the 2 remaining issues.

The remaining issues are the lack of funding to replace 2 police officers, 2 public works employees and 1 dispatcher, as well as the funding for unspecified "free trash" service.

The Mayor suggested that we do not need these positions filled, because the city has less population than years before (based on the 2000 census numbers I would imagine). The acting Public Works Director made an excellent point. He said "though we have a smaller population we have no fewer miles of roads". He expressed concern that with the reduced man power, and that the City might not be able to properly handle snow removal.

His argument can also apply to the Police Department. Four fewer people living on a block does not mean that it needs to be patrolled any less by the police department (in fact, vacant properties tend to attract crime). We may have fewer residents, but we have no fewer miles of neighborhoods that need to be patrolled.

The Mayor stated at the meeting that our manning table for the police department is in line with our "new" population when compared to surrounding municipalities. As always, the specific municipalities are not mentioned.

So, how many police officers do similar sized municipalities have?

Overland = 16,838 residents (7,012 households) - 45 Officers, 13 Civilians

Bridgeton = 18,445 residents (6,251 households) - 57 Officers, 17 Civilians
Creve Coeur = 16,500 residents (6,988 households) - 50 Officers, 11 Civilians

I am not sure where the Mayor gets her information. Most of the surrounding communities are either significantly smaller or larger than Overland. The above communities are the closest to our size within our area of St. Louis County and both have more officers. One City, which is only 60% of our size has more officers as well.

Berkley = 10,063 residents (3,600 households) - 47 Officers, 11 Civilians

The current proposal only funds 43 officers. When we hear about more and more types of crime, security concerns, etc, I would think we would want a larger police presence on the street, not a smaller one. A few years ago we had a budget for 47 Officers. The previous administration reduced this to 45 due to budget concerns. Now this administration wants to reduce it to 43. We cannot afford to have a lower police presence on the street than surrounding communities. Less cops on the streets makes Overland more attractive to criminals (as the manning differences means that surrounding communities have 2-3 more cars on the road per shift). More crime means lower property values, more residents moving elsewhere, which leads to more vacant property, more budget short falls etc.

Councilman Knode at one point said to Councilman O'Connell, "Why don't you take everything from the residents and give it all to the Police Department".

This appears to be a clear misunderstanding of the dynamics here. The Police Department is a service to the residents. Reducing the Police department is reducing services to the residents. It is a dangerous move, that is not justified by returning a portion of City paid trash service to the residents (and letting the residents pay for the majority of it).

The City has the funding for these positions, but that funding is budgeted for "free" trash collection. They budgeted $616,000.00 for a trash service that we are currently paying $1,300,000.00 ,or so, for as residents. However, the Mayor and her supporting Council members claim they have not met with any trash companies to discuss the costs of various services. They claim that they can somehow get us trash services we need for less than half of what we are currently paying and less than we were paying before the City started having the residents pay for it directly. How it this possible? They have no answer for us. What services does this include? They have no answer for us.

The Trash Committee has not met (at least no meetings were announced that I am aware of) to consider options, costs, etc. According to the Mayor at several Council meetings the City has received no bids (though she didn't say anything about proposals).

How can we blindly budget for something without any information? How can we risk longer response times by the police, delays when residents call 911, and ineffective snow removal for a series of unknowns?

If it comes up for a vote I expect the Council will not approve the Budget at the next Council meeting on Monday, Oct. 23rd, 2006. The Council and the Mayor agreed to have another Workshop meeting on Tuesday October 24th at 6:30pm. Perhaps they will be able to get into the real issues of the budget in that meeting. As a resident, I do not want to trade safety and security for a trash service where I will still have a monthly bill from a trash company that I have to pay. If the Mayor and the Council want us to support this, they have to start getting serious and specifically identifying what this "free" service will include, and what residents will still have to pay.

I would like to ask that the Trash Committee start meeting on this issue so that the facts can finally be presented to the residents of Overland. Most of the residents cannot support such an expensive question mark. The residents willing to do so are doing this because they really hate the idea of having a monthly bill they did not have before. They deserve to see the details because they will not be losing that bill with the new "free" trash. They will get a reduction in that bill, but they will still have a bill.

The Mayor and some on the Council will say I am wrong on this, but they will not provide the facts, figures and proposals they have (but claim they do not). If the politicians want to prove me wrong on this they need to start holding Trash Committee Meetings and investigating the real costs and options for Trash Service. One thing is certain, outside of semantics, the City will not get free trash service back again, ever. Even the proponents, plans require that we all dig in our pockets and pay every quarter. Is a less than 50% reduction in our bills for trash service worth the safety and security issues that these staff reductions will create?

That is a decision the voters will have to make. We deserve the full story and the Facts, but we are not getting them. Why will Councilmen Knode, Sellers, and Owensby, as well as Mayor Purzner not tell us any specifics about their proposed trash service. Does anyone really think that blindly trusting any politicians is a smart move?

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