July 08, 2008
Sparks fly over 41 % raise
Our nominee for the Most Generous Public Sector Contract in New York State for 2008--granted the year is only half over--goes to a financially struggling village in the Southern Tier.
In May, the Village of Johnson City (population: 15,000) awarded its firefighters a salary increase of 41.05 percent over five years. At the time, village trustees mistakenly said the raise totaled a whopping 33.2 percent, leading an editorial writer to ask "What are these people thinking?"
This is Johnson City we are talking about here--a fiscally-strapped village in the fiscally-struggling upstate region of fiscally-strained New York in the fiscally-challenged United States.
It's hard to argue Johnson City firefighters were underpaid. Under the expired contract, the base pay for a starting firefighter two years ago was $44,722--higher than the current base pay for firefighters in New York City ($36,400) as well as in neighboring Binghamton and Endicott.
In 2010-11, the fifth year of the contract, starting pay will be $63,096.
The total payroll for 41 firefighters by 2011 will be $3.28 million, which averages out to a salary of $80,072.
Nearly a month after village trustees approved the contract 3-2, Mayor Harry Lewis acknowledged the raises actually totaled 41.05 percent. Another trustee told the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin that
...to his knowledge...the village still hasn't calculated how much the contract would cost the village for the entire five-year period that expires in 2011.
Responding to criticism from property taxpayers, Lewis has asked the firefighters union to reopen the contract. Today the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin reports the union has offered to reduce its reduce its five-year pay increase to 20 percent--if the village agrees to restore staffing positions.
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