Although there is waste in every budget, the bulk of our taxes are going to personnel costs, i.e., wages, salaries and benefits.  We are caught in some incredibly lucrative (for town & school employees) Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) that were entered into a few years ago when times were good.  As just two examples, our fire department's personnel budget accounts for 81% of their overall budget (up an incredible 11.5% this year!), and the police personnel line is well over 90%.

Even worse is that these CBAs are founded on automatic Cost Of Living Adjustments (COLAs), not merit increases. 

This is huge in light of the "Evergreen Law" passed a few years ago by our "friends" in Concord.  The Evergreen Law stipulates that when a contract expires, employees will continue to be paid pursuant to the salary schedule in that expired contract.  Specifically, step increases for years of experience and educational credits will continue to be paid even in the absence of a successor agreement.  So, effectively, this year we couldn't say to the unions, "Thanks, but no thanks, we're not hiring union employees anymore," even if we wanted to.

Somehow, we have to get the Board of Selectmen and the School Board to change their approach in their upcoming re-negotiations.  If they persist in including COLAs, then there will be less incentive for the Collective Bargaining Units to negotiate in good faith since, according to the law, they will be guaranteed the last COLA in the contract even if working without a contract.

Both the town and school CBAs are coming up for re-negotiation soon.  The Town will be re-negotiating this summer, the school board about 6 months later.  Send a message to our selectmen and our school board members that the time has come to put the brakes on these COLAs.  Contact information for all of them is available by clicking here.

If you'd like to take a look at the Town CBAs, click on the links below . We hope to have the school CBAs posted soon as well.

RELATED INFORMATION

  •  Goffstown Fire CBA
  •  Goffstown Police CBA
  •  Goffstown Public Works CBA

Guy Caron can be reached via e-mail at: GuyC@GoffstownResidentsAssociation.com

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