Village agrees to moderate
increase in six-year agreement
The Village of Garden City unanimously voted to execute their Police Benevolent Association (PBA) Contract effective June 1, 2014 to May 31, 2020, at a recent board of trustees meeting.
Village Deputy Mayor Richard Silver explained the contract, a six-year term, as a tentative agreement that was concluded on the Wednesday prior. The former contract had expired in 2014.
“We are pleased with the package that we’ve negotiated,” Silver said. “We think it’s a very attractive contract, and on a comparative basis from the old contract, it shapes up very well.”
According to Silver, the key elements reached in the negotiation are that it contemplates two-and-a-half percent annual increases in salaries and salary related items in each one of the six-year salary related items collected; and a pension enhancement enabling officers to retire beginning at age 55 without any discounting of pension benefits.
Silver said that two-and-a-half percent is “at the lower end of the range of recent settlements,” and by way of comparison, the expired contract had annual increases of three-and-a-half percent.
Currently, PBA members will suffer a discount of as much as 27 percent in their pension benefits for retiring prior to age 62. The costs of that enhancement consists of a past $1.2 million dollar service credit, if paid over five years, which Silver said the village expected to do, and an ongoing annual cost of an estimated $30,000.
“The cost of the past service credit of approximately $1.2 million is going to be substantially offset by a give-up of a portion of holiday pay by the PBA over the next five years, in an amount which is close to the past credit cost to the village,” Silver said.
Silver also said that the beneficial effect of adopting the pension enhancement is an increased pace of retirements, and that the village doesn’t anticipate a significant turnover in the police department over the next several years owing simply to the demographics in the age of the current complement of officers.
“We do, however, see the potential to increase the turnover in the police department after the next several years,” Silver said.
Silver explained that in turning over, the current complement has a number of benefits, including having a younger police force out on the street, which Silver remarked that the PBA itself advocated themselves in the negotiations.
Currently, a new hire in the police department begins at slightly less than half the top-pay salary of a veteran officer, and the salary schedule contemplates that gap to close over a seven-year period.
“That means after seven years, a new officer is at the top of the salary schedule,” Silver said. “During that seven-year period, because that current officer is not at the top, we save about $250,000 over the cost of the top officer that we replaced.”
The new contract now stretches that seven-year period to nine years, and because of a reformulation of the salary schedule, the savings will increase to just under $350,000, and Silver said that “pickup” will increase as the village goes through the terms of the contract.
As explained by Silver, the village currently pays 100 percent of the health costs for all of its sworn officers, and 100 percent of the pension costs for the overwhelming majority of those officers as well. The new contract calls for new hires to pay 10 percent of their health costs for the first three years after they leave the academy, and then 15 percent thereafter through their working career and retirement.
New hires who joined the pension system after 2012 contribute to the cost of their pension benefits at a range that starts at three percent of their salary on the first $45,000, and increases to six percent for amounts over $100,000.
“Due in large part to these contributions and other benefit concessions in the pension plan for newer hires, the pension cost to the village is substantially less for newer officers,” Silver said.
Village of Garden City Mayor Nicholas Episcopia acknowledged Silver, Village Administrator Ralph Suozzi and Trustee Robert Bolebruch as a team that made the contract happen.
“This is a contract that I think really gave the give and take of what negotiating is all about,” Episcopia said. “We believe this is one of the better things that we could have done.”
