LEWISTON — City officials hope to begin a season of union negotiations Friday, summarizing city finances for union leaders now and over the next year.
“We hope to start things off with a sense of where things are going, budget-wise,” Deputy City Administrator Phil Nadeau said. “It’s a good way to begin the process, really — with a rough baseline. We’re trying to anticipate what the impact will be and then start working through the process.”
Contracts with all six municipal employee unions have expired or are scheduled to expire this summer, Nadeau said.
Contracts with the local union chapters representing Lewiston police and firefighters expired last year. Those include two chapters of the Maine Association of Police, one representing sergeants and lieutenants and the other representing patrol officers and detectives and a chapter of the International Association of Firefighters.
Contracts with the local chapters of the Maine State Employees Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are scheduled to expire June 30. Lewiston has two chapters of the AFSCME, one representing the city’s Public Works employees and a second representing most Public Works supervisors
The MSEA represents about 50 general government employees, most of whom work in City Hall.
Last year, the city negotiated one-year contracts with the AFSCME and MSEA unions because of the financial uncertainty at the time. Those contracts didn’t include any cost-of-living wage increases or other wage increases, Nadeau said. They did include incentives of 3 percent to employees who agreed to retire in the coming year.
Nadeau said it’s the second time the city has kicked off labor negotiations with a daylong review for local union representatives. The meeting is scheduled to take place at Lewiston City Hall.
“The next phase is serious negotiations,” Nadeau said.
This year’s financial forecast may not be quite as dire as last year’s, he said. Gov. Paul LePage has announced that he hopes to give municipalities more state revenue-sharing money than they received last year. That could mean Lewiston will receive $200,000 more in the 2011-12 budget than it did in the current 2010-11 budget.
“But our insurance costs still went up 15 percent, and we’re still having discussions about how this affects our bottom line,” Nadeau said.
He said staff hopes to present the draft 2011-12 budget to councilors and the public by March 29.
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