Stories indexed with the term ‘negotiation’

In a letter to the city council dated March 18, 2011, fire chief Dominick Lanza makes clear that the personal reasons he gave earlier in announcing his resignation on Feb. 15, 2011 were not the only impetus behind his decision to leave the job: “Yes, I leave for personal reasons but had it not been for that it would be for the lack of support and the systematic destruction of your Fire Department.” Lanza started the job just last year on March 22.

In his letter, Lanza compares the city’s approach to fire protection to “playing baseball with a basketball team.” He specifically criticizes the possibility of transforming fire protection in Ann Arbor to a combined career firefighter and paid-on-call department, calling instead for regional cooperation as a way to be more cost effective.

By way of background, at a December 2010 city council budget retreat, the council discussed the possibility of moving to a combined paid-on-call department, and a fire protection services study was authorized by the council at its Feb. 7, 2011 meeting to explore that option. At the council’s most recent meeting, on March 7, 2011, the chair of the council’s labor committee, Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), asked the city attorney to explore the legalities involved with a recent move by Allen Park, Mich. – that community had decided to send layoff notices to nearly its entire fire department.

In his letter, Lanza also refers to a 3% reduction in pay the firefighters union accepted last January in order to preserve 14 firefighter positions that had been planned for elimination. He objects to the characterization of that concession as only lasting for six months: “Your firefighters … have taken permanent pay cuts of 3% not for six months as reported but in perpetuity as well as an additional 1% pension contribution.”

The contract under which the firefighters are working – which was revised to make the 3% salary cut – expired on June 30, 2010. So for now, firefighters continue to work for 3% less than they made in 2009 before making the concession. [Full Story]

On Jan. 5, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board held a retreat to discuss current negotiations with the city of Ann Arbor about the agreement under which the DDA manages the city’s parking system. And this past Monday, the respective “mutually beneficial” committees of the city council and the DDA board met to continue their conversation on the parking contract – a dialogue that has taken place in public view since June 2010.

Two days later, at Wednesday’s meeting of the DDA partnerships committee, board member Gary Boren reported back to his colleagues about the conversation that had taken place at Monday’s mutually beneficial committee meeting. Boren was frank in his assessment that the city’s team appeared intransigent.

To Boren, it appeared that city representatives had staked out their position, and they saw anything less than that position as meaning the city was not receiving what it is properly owed. For his part, Boren considers the DDA to be in the driver’s seat, because the current contract runs through 2015, and would not require the additional payments the city is seeking for that period.

At the partnerships committee meeting, Susan Pollay – executive director of the DDA – drew attention to the fact that there will be an increasing sense of urgency to firm up the contract as both the city and the DDA put together their respective budgets for the next fiscal year. The city administrator will need firm numbers by March, she suggested.

In this report, we put Boren’s comments and the ensuing discussion by the DDA’s partnerships committee in the context of the DDA’s board retreat last week, when board chair Joan Lowenstein noted, “We’re not a savings bank. We’re supposed to spend money.”

The retreat included a discussion of the kinds of projects the DDA would like to undertake over the next 10 years, some of which would need to be deferred, depending on the amount of parking revenue the DDA passes through to the city. The DDA also appears ready to defer some of its scheduled maintenance to the parking decks, if the maintenance activity is of a more aesthetic or cosmetic nature.

It emerged during the retreat that the politics of parking contract negotiations include the city’s ability to fund public safety – firefighters and police. The speculation was floated at the retreat that it might actually help the city’s negotiating stance with its labor unions, if the DDA took a firmer approach to the parking contract. [Full Story]