Readers Continue to Respond to the Tiger Team Report :The village council should act quickly to implement these suggestions
The report makes it pretty clear that the village is broke and taxes will continue to go up at an unacceptable rate. It doesn’t strike me that the report is “trying to hurt” village workers, at all. I think the report even states that the employees are not to blame for the agreements between the village and the unions. But, the contract obligations are obviously the biggest expense. And, according to the data shown in the report, some village employee groups are receiving excessive compensation, which has compounded through multiple increases year after year.
To ignore this would lead to ineffective solutions. That has been the problem in the past. I am sure the union leadership will fight any change. However, the report claims that starting salaries are higher and the pay schedules and bonuses proposed in the report look pretty attractive (the merit bonuses are up to $15,000 per year). If an employee making $100,000 gets just a $7,500 merit bonus, that is the same as a $7.5% increase for the year…that is more than any contract increase that would ever be approved and it is in the employee’s control. The only employees who may not like the changes are those, who don’t think they will qualify for merit bonuses, which is exactly how the system should work.
I think these suggestions are great. Hopefully, the village council acts quickly to implement them.
How do you implement this for contract workers?
Could the Tiger Team examine the BOE finances? That is where most of my money goes.