GilfordGrok

Well, there's lots of places to start.  Why not with the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) for the Police union?  They are represented by Teamsters as Local 633, ... 

Sidenote: Teamsters?  The Teamsters?  The same union that I believe is still under Federal watch mode for, shall we say, "hijinks"?  I still have a hard time, not with the unionization, but with who the police chose to represent them...the analogy that keeps running through my mind now is that of Timothy Geithner, Obama's choice to be Treasury Secretary, claiming his tax problems were because he couldn't run TurboTax right.  This is the mastermind that is supposed to know guide our country's finances out of the current decline?  If you and I claimed that same reasoning, we sure wouldn't be sitting in the White House on a regular basis with the President...we'd be in the Big House on a full time basis with the Warden...the Teamsters?...sigh....

...come to an agreement with the Town, we get to vote on their Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).  For the most part, I have no real problems with the contract as presented to us by the Selectmen and Town Administration.  In fact, I voted for it - in fact, it was a 9-0 vote on the BudComm.

Here's my only problem with the CBA - it has been structured in such a way that the "loss of a year's raise" has been obviated.  In other words, even though the union leadership could not come to a reasonable accomodation last year, the union members are now being held blameless - once again, taxpayers have to make up the difference.  My stance is still that if you want to "live by the union, die by the union"; taxpayers should not be on the hook economically because the union bargaineers could not complete the deal.

Yet another Sidebar: when the Warrant Articles to appear before the townfolk at the Deliberative Sessions become "valid", I'll post them up here.