Photo by Boyd Loving
Readers Debate Tiger Team Report focus on Village Worker Salaries and Benefits
All the suggestions from the tiger team revolve around reducing employee wages and benefits, dismantling contracts, changing work rules. It’s not the employees fault the village is in the mess that it is, and no mention is made of a multimillion dollar cost over run when rebuilding village hall, nor is there any mention made of the squandering of cost savings from the pension contribution holiday left over from the Whitman years. No mention made of reining in costs of health care legislative help needed of course. Maybe someone can sugar coat what they want to do by calling it something else but it is what it is.
or
You obviously have not read the report. That is not what the group recommended at all. Most of the recommendations had nothing to do with employee benefits or wages.
The recommended contract changes were about simplifying the contracts and correcting certain unrealistic policies that cannot be sustained to bring them more in line with best practices in the private sector. However, starting salaries look like they have increased and the rate of base pay increases are higher than current levels in the first half of most employees’ careers. The big changes seem to be eliminate accumulated sick day pay, which is basically “double dipping” on the same pay and reducing excessive pension obligations to levels that are closer to what they were originally intended to be.
The report doesn’t blame the employees (I think it actually says that). Nor does it seek to punish them. You can blame whomever you want. But, the reality is that the current contract structures are unrealistic and unaffordable. The taxpayers can’t afford to keep paying more and, in private, many employees will admit that they knew this day was coming.
so start with the police and fire dept’s they make all the big money in town. do we need a paid fire dept. come on so many other towns don’t have a paid fire dept. the village is not replacing workers in other dept’s because they are using those funds to pay for fire dept workers. yes it’s true and the top know it. what a shame. just look for your self.
the d p w had 30 workers in 1995 and now they are down to 7 workers in that dept. yes 7. and the police and fire dept’s both have a good amount of workers.
No they don’t. State your qualifications to to decide how many cops and firemen are needed I agree the dpw has been chopped and I don’t agree with it. However I think the reduction in work force is the result of a 90 million dollars school budget. the cops have gone from 52 to 40 and has one of the lowest cop per resident ratio’s in the county. I WANT A FULLY STAFFED COP FORCE AND FIRE DEPT> period the situation is disgusting. I’ll pay the tax hire what we need.
I do not want to pay whatever it takes to keep them fully staffed – whatever that means. Do we really need all those firefighters and their healthcare/pensions?
Gee…there’s a new and original comment
We did not need the tiger team to tell us where the big money goes in the village budget. Spoiler alert – it is the same at the BOE, and the board just negotiated raises for teachers!
No one wants to deal with the obivous problem which is salary, benefits and pensions. Spare me the tiger team revelations. The question is “what are we willing to do about personnel costs”.
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Why can’t departments be told that they have a budget of $$$ and freeze that budget. Across the board force cuts in all departments. Can the residents force a resolution to freeze all budgets and not allow automatic increases year to year. They will soon see that they will need to layoff employees to stay under budget every year.
Shift the responsibility for cost cutting to management. Cut their budgets by 20% and see where they make the changes. As healthcare and pension expenses keep rising they will be forced to cut even more. The reality is that all contracts need to be renegtioated. Paid fire is a nice perk but I bet that we could outsource the jobs.
The cuts you are talking about have already been made. The residents cannot force a resolution to freeze budgets and pay raises. Department directors were told to cut their budgets already, The responibilty for cost cutting is already with management, and the biggest savings to be had will require legislative action, the healthcare vendors shoul be taken to task as a public utility and should have to go before a state commision before they can raise rates thats where you will find big savings. Not on the backs of the backs of the public employees.
It is not just healthcare. Management needs to cut more. Set a budget cap and force more cuts. Businesses have been doing this for years why not municipak government? The perks are out of line with reality.
We do not need legislation to control healthcare costs. Cut benefits, cut staff – and cut paid holidays!
BTW – when they did not pick up garbage because of show & ice, what were they doing all day?
Why is the village closed on Lincoln’s birthday and again on presidents day this seems like a good place to start saving money.
Cut the amount of reserve for uncollected taxes we have a 98% collected tax rate yet they hold 1,624,284.63 in reserve they should cut back on that and hire more employees.
When those 4 new housing developments are completed (thank you Mr. Mayor and Deputy Mayor) there will be a need for additional FD and PD personnel. I can’t see how those developments will keep costs down. Why should these variances be graned? The developers should have know what they were allowed to do with the properties when they bought them.
#10 thats an exellent point. Will there be a need for another school and more teachers as well? How much will that cost and who will pay tax payer or developer?
The viiage budget shows a 600,728.00 cost for Central Dispatch the county offered it for free Why not switch over if it saves 600 grand a year?
then give it to the county. and for the fire dept they should be a northern bergen county fore dept. that would work. just like in north hudson county.
County FD sounds good. And since we have the sixth lowest crime rate, maybe we don’t need so many police officers. Parse out the work that police do that an assistant could manage. Maybe have Traffic enforcement (call it community enforcement) be non-police. they could do the meters, construction sites and non essential tasks. To get a full cop salary they should be doing only police work.
Hospitals segmented jobs years ago. Most staff positions are defined by certifications. They do not have their highly paid employees doing things that another lesser-paid employee can do.
The problem with a county fire department is there arent enough paid dept’s around to draw from. Are the towns with volunteers going to make them paid so they can contribute manpower? That is a similar problem with police mergers, Ridgewood is a busier town than most around it except paramus, why would an adjoining town want to merge with ridgewood. The meters are repaired by civillians, and enforced by civilans already, constuction site are staffed by cops but paid for by the contractor, the town budget they billed 150000 dollars in fees to contractors. Not bad. School crossings are already staffed by civillians