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City Council to mayor, firefighters: Get a room, you guys, and work out a contract

The City Council met briefly this morning to urge Tom Menino and Firefighters Local 718 to get a room and hammer out a contract that's fair to both firefighters and taxpayers.

After councilors Mark Ciommo (Allston/Brighton) and John Connolly (at large) moved to hold off discussions until after the city and the firefighters met, Council President Mike Ross proposed a meeting room in City Hall that he noted has already been outfitted with "pads of paper, a calculator and water - and a working computer." Ross also proposed that he and councilors Sal LaMattina and Felix Arroyo join in as observers. The council will reconvene at 2 p.m. tomorrow to discuss any progress.

WBUR reported this morning that Menino might be willing to consider giving the firefighters their 2.5% drug-testing pay increase only if it applies to current firefighters, rather than new hires. The firefighters last week offered to forego that raise for a year to help bring about a settlement.

The council could vote Wednesday on whether to accept or reject an arbitration panel's recommended contract, which includes the increase on top of a pay increase similar to what other city unions have gotten over the past four years - during which firefighters have worked without a raise.

Arbitration panel's recommendation.

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Comments

.....stepping up on this one. Its the one time in recent memory that they are forced to make a real decision that effects taxpayers and they are shirking all responsiblity. Pathetic. Common sense says dont pay greedy firefighters to show up to work sober. Cant see any other way to look at it. Its not like 718 has painted themselves as anything besides greedy over the past 5 years. Pension abuse, sick time abuse, drug abuse.......Its a great chance for someone on the Council to stand up and seperate themselves from the pack (Mayoral run in 2014????), but they all seem to be too afraid of the spotlight and 718. Will someone please track down Flaherty and ask him about 718's power at the polls?

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On top of the fact that Menino hates 718 for the sins of the past and he will exact revenge at every turn. But I think there's more at stake here. As he says - and probably rightly so - the other city unions will want their turn at the trough. Only one problem - the spigot for the trough is broken as follows:

The city's three ain sources of income are:

property taxes, state aid, everything else (lots of little pieces)

Property taxes (about 60% of the budget) will go up 3-4% in total - 2.5% for prop 2 1/2 plus a small amount for new construction - but not much because there isn't much going on these days

State aid (about 15% of the budget) will probably be about flat - because the state is flat broker than even the city - wouldn't be looking for much here and maybe even a little bit less depending on how state revenues pan out for the year.

Everything else (the last 25% of the budget) - the city doesn't control a lot of this (like interest rates) and a few other areas (the state regulates/oversees certain fines etc. There are very few areas likely to see meaningful increases and even a 4% increase only amounts to 1% on the entire budget.

At best you are looking at probably 2-3% growth in the 2012 budget. So let's give everyone a 3% raise you'd say? Only one problem. Almost all of that will get eaten up by increases in health care costs and pension increases (which are skyrocketing even faster than health care I believe - but the city doesn't want you to know that so they blame it on health care).

Bottom line - what the mayor is looking at is another year of hardship and possible further layoffs if we keep giving out raises and do nothing to control health care and pension increases. On top of this we dodged a giant bullet last year by "only" getting a 6% increase in residential property taxes and a 12% rate increase. At some point the city will be forced to "mark to market" and reflect the 30% drop in commercial rents that should be correlated closely to commercial assessments (which were only decreased about 7% or so last year) - pushing a huge one time percentage increase onto the residents of Boston.

There's some politics at play here - timing will be important because 2011 is a council election year meaning the council will want to either push this tax increase into 2011 because the increases will be notified after the election (we need to change this and get the new tax rates announced in October - would have like to have seen what happened in the election if it were held 2 weeks after telling everyone their tax rate went up 12%). Making matters worse if you are a politician is that the downtown ate a lot of last year's tax increases - that probably won't fly next time around as prices have moderated there so the taxes will probably get pushed into the neighborhoods as their prices have started to recover - making matters worse for at large councilors and district councilors west of Mass Ave.

If we get our big tax bump heading into 2011 the council needs to look like they are playing tough with the budget. Over the next 12-24 months expect this to get interesting - and ugly.

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