City Council Must Review, Repair Damaged Negotiating Process

By Dian Woodhouse

In its handling of the negotiations with the police and fire departments, Ogden City committed several monumental blunders. Those negotiations' unsatisfactory conclusions were further exacerbated by comments from members of both the administration and the council that agreements are only good for one year. It is not only wise, but necessary that the Ogden City Council revisit both the procedure and the outcome of these negotiations, and attempt to rectify mistakes made therein.

In 1995, Ogden City signed Joint Resolution 95-9, a: "JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE MAYOR OF OGDEN CITY AND THE OGDEN CITY COUNCIL ESTABLISHING A STRUCTURED PROCESS FOR THE DISCUSSION OF ADJUSTMENTS TO WAGES AND BENEFITS TO BE PROVIDED TO OGDEN CITY EMPLOYEES IN THE ADOPTION OF THE ANNUAL OGDEN CITY BUDGET." Adopted on July 20th, 1995 by the city and signed by former Mayor Glen Mecham, 95-9 has been in effect for eleven years, and has worked reasonably well up until this year, when it seems that the procedure was simply not followed at all. In fact, one new council member professed to have been unaware of its existence.

95-9 begins by stating that the initial meeting between either the mayor or his designee and the employee representatives shall take place in January. After this, the mayor or designee meets with the City Council to "jointly develop wage and benefit parameters." Point 3 is the mayor or designee going back to the employee representative to try to reach a consensus.

Point 4 then allows for "meetings as needed" between the administration and the city council to jointly review the wage and benefit parameters.

Since the mayor/council form of government is set up to have a balance of power, and since many times both sides have differing opinions as to budget allocations,, allowing the mayor or his designee to be the only point of contact with both the employee representatives and the council throughout the negotiating process seems slightly prejudicial toward the administrative viewpoint. However, 95-9 also allows for many meetings between the administration and the council, and one would hope that during these the administration would make the position of the employee organizations known to the council.

It has been alleged, however, that this year, meetings between the administration and the council to "jointly develop" these wage and benefit parameters did not take place. Nor did the negotiations open in January--it was more like March. The council first received the tentative budget sometime in May, and the whole thing, not just the police and fire part, had to be adopted by June 22nd.. Not much time to go through things.

Point 5 deserves to be quoted in full. It states: "Any negotiated wages and/or benefits that are exchanged for different benefits will be memorialized in writing for future reference in wage and benefit discussions. In the event there are proposed modifications in future years, those modifications can be reviewed in historical context."

A clearer mandate that agreements are ongoing and not good only for the year in which they were negotiated one cannot imagine. Unless it be the concluding paragraph, which states: "BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that any change to the process established in the joint resolution shall be made only after meeting and conferring with employee representatives in substantively the same manner as described above."

It will be remembered that at the meeting where the rec center was approved, many watched the council vote to repeal a resolution made by a previous council stating that a percentage of lease revenue from BDO would be dedicated to capital improvement projects. This resolution had to be repealed in order to divert that BDO money from capital improvement projects to the rec center, and it was repealed, in an official action. Not only is 95-9 also a resolution, but it is a joint resolution involving other entities, and states that all parties must agree to changes in it, and then and only then may it be repealed by a similar vote. Since this has not happened, 95-9 is still in full effect. And should have been followed.

95-9 has seven points. Point 6 states that the object of the process is to obtain an agreement satisfactory to both parties by May 30th or before, and point 7 states that, in the case of impasse being reached, the employee representatives shall present their position to the council. Far from being out of line, impasse is part of the process, and is actually the only time the employee representatives are able to speak directly to the council. As all negotiations are conducted in a closed executive meeting, one would assume that the council would meet with the organizations who have gone to impasse in a like meeting, and not an open council meeting where an exchange of ideas between the council and the grieving organizations is awkward, if not prohibitive, but the latter is what happened this year.

During this whole bungled process, the police and fire representatives showed themselves very willing to work with the city. However,, after both organizations had reached impasse and presented their position to the council as per 95-9,, the council was presented with several options that were allegedly confusing to some. This occurred on the same evening that they were to adopt the budget. Perhaps as a result, the option that penalized the police and firefighters with a new merit rating system that both organizations describe as" punitive" was adopted. For the police and fire departments, the botched process and denial of their requests, coupled with placement under the new "punitive" system became too much. And that is very understandable.

Placement under the new merit system seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Employees elsewhere in local government only have to obtain a score of 3 in their merit systems in order to achieve a merit raise of 5%. Under this new merit system, police and fire must achieve a score of 4.5 in order to get a 5% merit increase.

Simply repealing the ordinance that placed both organizations under the new, "punitive" merit system would be a good start toward rectifying the unjust treatment our police and fire departments have received. Past agreements and promises made should also be reviewed, as per point 6, and steps taken to honor those agreements, or, if that is not possible, offer something of similar value.

This would go a long way toward reestablishing a modicum of trust between all parties. Both the police and fire have now indicated that they are unwilling to negotiate next year under the" process" that was used this past negotiating season by the administration and council. Although it is impossible to work with an entity which does not honor agreements, and although this is what seems to have happened, it is fixable. It is perfectly possible to rebuild a damaged bridge, and that is what needs to be done.

© 2006 Dian Woodhouse

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Dian has kindly granted us permission to re-publish this article here. The article was originally published on the Standard-Examiner website.

Comments, anyone?