2007-01-08 Regular Meeting,Public Hearing and Workshop Meeting of the La Porte City Council

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Good Evening City Council. My name is Matthew Novosad and I am President of the La Porte Police Officer's Association, Before I discuss the issues regarding salary and benefits, I would like to note the Association separates itself from the anonymous letter that was recently sent to the Bayshore Sun. The Association would never author a document and label it as anonymous, as it is common practice to place a signature on all documents, This anonymous letter represents the view of an individual and not the Association as a whole, No board member including myself had any knowledge of this letter, Now on to the articles in the Bayshore Sun pertaining to pay and benefits, On Dec, 17th Matt Daeumer's letter was printed in the Letters to the Editor section, Mr, Daeumer mentioned information containing communications about the Mercer group providing assistance regarding benefits. Instead of a benefits survey completed by the Mercer group, the City went into litigation delaying a possibility of having a benefits study, I believe having a study later is better than not having one at all, On Dec. 27th there were two articles referencing pay and benefits. One of the articles was the performance of the Mercer group stating it was a bust. I would have to agree that if $40,000 was spent on a study that did not provide the information needed, I too would be upset. We have to ask ourselves this, did the Mercer group proceed with a study with information given to them or was it assumed they would go above and beyond what was placed in the expectations of the City? Ifwe base our decisions on assumptions I do not think I have to explain the disaster that can occur when we assume. I do believe referencing a company doing childish work is a bit harsh, especially when the Mercer Group has a five page client list ranging from Aetna Life Insurance, IBM, TML and many more City, County, State and private agencies, The next article is information presented by Mr. Joerns responding to Mr. Daeumer's letter, Mr. Joerns stated the City has increased contributions for employees since 2003 to current from $5000 to $7400, While this may be true here is some information I have experienced personally, I have increased my contributions over 300% in the last 6 years, This comes out to approx, 4500 dollars more out of my pocket. If you add my increase in contributions over these last six years and factor in no increase in 2007 my contributions will be totaled at approx. 14,000 dollars, This does not include co pays, prescriptions, out of pocket and misc, charges that is not covered by insurance. So it is not just the city contributing to health care, the employees are also. On Dec, 31 st the front page of the Bayshore Sun printed an article referencing Chief Reff's memo to Mr. Joerns regarding pay increases and salaries. I do agree that the Chief s pay is not the highest in the area as that was shown by a survey that I performed on my own internally using seven cities in the area. The article gives information presented by the Chief on percentage increases of salaries, It is true that step raises have gone up since 1999, These increases come from an industry standard that needs to be met so as the PD can be competitive with other agencies, The problem is that by the time the increases are planned and enacted, the other agencies increase their salaries or benefits even more, This always leaves the PD attempting to bring up the rear. These increases