On the message and order, referred on July 13, 2022, Docket #0865 for a supplemental appropriation Order for the Property Management Department for FY23 in the amount of One Hundred Eight Thousand One Hundred Fifty-Eight Dollars ($108,158.00) to cover the FY23 cost contained within the collective bargaining agreements between the City of Boston and the Municipal Police Patrolmen's Association (MPPA). The terms of the contract include base wage increases of 2%, 1.5% and 2%, to be given in October of each Fiscal year of the contract term. Filed in the Office of the City Clerk on July 11, 2022, the committee submitted a report recommending that the order ought to pass. The report was accepted; the order was passed.
NPA submits a report recommending that the report ought to pass in docket number 0865, the Committee on City Services and Innovation Technology, to which was referred on July 13, 2020 to Lucky Number 0865. Message In order for a supplemental appropriation order for the Property Management Department for fiscal year 23 in the amount of 108,005 $158 to cover the fiscal year. 23 costs contained within the collective bargaining agreements between the city of Boston and the Municipal Police Patrolmen's Association and PPA. The terms of the contract include base wage increases of 2%, 1.5% and 2% to be given in each of in October of each fiscal year of the contract term filed in the Office of the City Clerk on July 11, 2022, submits a report recommending that the report ought to pass. Thank you. The Chair recognizes Council BLOCK Chair of the Committee on City Services Innovation Technology Council. You have the floor. So much, Mr. President. As is mentioned in the committee report, we held a hearing on this on July 18th, 2022. All four of these dockets per usual with collective bargaining pairs of dockets where we both would take the money out of the existing reserve and then attribute it to the appropriate department. The two ones up for consideration here are the school traffic supervisors who manage folks what crossing the street are kids when they go to veeps. And then the municipal police officers who folks so well. One of their main stations obviously is city hall and we pass them every day. Both contracts follow the pattern of the recent round of contracts of 2%, 1.5% and 2% raises over the three years of the contract. Remind the Council that because these have been out of contract for a while, most of those are retroactive payments. And the last one is effective this September. And obviously a number of these will be up in the near future. And so one thing that's come up with many of these is sort of the question of does that really reflect the inflation and the competitiveness of our labor situation right now? And I think one of things the administration said is, you know, we've got another round that are coming up soon enough with that are, you know, about the kind of years going forward. Both of them have a one time lump sum payment, non precedent setting kind of. It's something that's been done for a bunch of our civil unions to kind of just acknowledge the difficulty of this work over the last few years. So in the case of the municipal officers, it's a $1,000, one time lump sum payment minus standard deductions. And then for the traffic supervisor to which is a part time role, it's 375 minus standard deductions. The agreement also updated the military leave policy for in the same way that some other prior ones had. And it was basically just realigning us with the way that the feds had rewritten that and making it a little bit more supportive and generous to our our members who might be doing military service. And then the the traffic supervisors one codifies the COVID vaccine policy. That's not. Part of it on the municipal one because it had already been done without union prior to this agreement. And then the municipal officers. Also. The city of Boston, paid parental leave policy and the addition of Juneteenth as a as a holiday for them were both formalized. Again, neither of those provisions are in with the traffic supervisors because it's part time work, not a full time. I think we were joined by Councilors Murphy, Brayton and Flynn at the hearing. Thank you to my colleagues for joining. And I think just a kind of overall theme on both of these fronts was that, you know, the council councilors in attendance certainly felt like the municipal police officers and the traffic supervisors are not paid enough. And that with traffic supervisors, you know, obviously, if those positions go unfilled, we see you know, we don't we don't have folks supervising those crossings to school. And it's really important to us that they be safe. And then our municipal police officers, we have a substantial number of vacancies right now. And so there's also a small increase to the the base rate for them on details that they do, which are somewhat different from the details that the D does. But I think the basic view that their their jobs have changed a bit with the passage of the Police Reform Act last year. And and that also has caused cause a lot of turnover. And so thinking about in the same way that we are with the park Rangers, how we make those really competitive, appealing jobs going forward and making sure that they're doing the things that the city wants, wants those roles to be doing is, as I said, they're really important folks that welcome here in the building. So that was sort of all kind of on the table for future conversation and just wanted to raise it here. But my recommendation today would be that all four of these dockets pass through council. Again, they're very much in line with the other ones that we've been considering and passing, and that does leave our collective bargaining reserve overall at 4.7 million for FY 22 and 75.3 million for FY 23. So thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you, counsel. BLOCK Would anyone else like to speak on these matters before we take a vote? I just I just wanted to highlight and thank Council BLOCK for having these hearings. We have a lot of municipal workers that are low paid workers. We expect them to live in the city with the residency. Municipal police officers, I believe, are making like $16 or $17 an hour. We had we hired several recently and they they left they quit at the at the first day because because the salary is so low. This is this is certainly something we support a pay raise for those dedicated workers. But it's really it's really not enough. It's almost it's almost embarrassing. And in my opinion, we need to do a better job of paying our municipal police officers. They protect us here in this building. Most of them, I think 60% of them are officers of color. And we owe it to these workers to give them a decent wage and treat them fairly and treat them with respect, but giving them 15, $16 an hour and making them live in the city. That's a recipe for disaster. Let me recognize Councilman Murphy. Councilor Murphy, you have the floor. To President Flynn, and thank you, Councilor Buck. I just want to go on record to say that I hope that the administration and us as a council will have more conversations. And this will prompt us to highly consider raising wages for the lowest paid workers who are struggling to live here in the city. The salary structure we have is just not enough to attract talent, especially with such high inflation, skyrocketing gas prices and a booming real estate market. Many departments are struggling to find new hires and keep them. And we need to give back to our council workers, our city workers. We are running a city government and we need all hands on deck and we have to provide fair wages to our hardworking staff so that we can continue to succeed together. And I assume it will. But when we have the working session on our own raises and the mayor's raisers raised, I hope that we talk about all of the city employees. And I know I was there one day, and I know the mayor and other councilors have showed up to Starbucks and other youth workers across the city that we do want to advocate for and make sure that they have a living wage. But if we're fighting for our baristas at the coffee shops across the city, I do believe we should also be standing up and fighting for our municipal police and the workers that are here in city hall and across the city keeping our city running just like we are. So I just want to go on record and say that. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Murphy. The chair recognizes Councilor Baker. Council Baker. Thank you all just. Well. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just want to kind of reinforce what you had said and what Councilor Murphy had said. We need to look at the structure and the way we pay it. And we're just talking about the security guards now. It's across the board in the city. I come from a city city department background and the step raises are out of line. The entrance isn't enough at $16, I think we said then when someone goes through on the steps, they're still only at 23 or $24. So we need to and we are on a level unable or not allowed to have those discussions. So however we however we communicate that this is important to us, that we need to look at step raises and increasing those, especially in this time when we talk about needing to attract talent at at higher levels. And I totally agree with that. We need to pay more at the higher, higher level to be able to attract real talent here. And our raises are a little kind of separate from that. But to be able to attract talent, it needs to start at the bottom increases all the way up. We've we've had a pretty good run as far as taxes in our in our income coming in to the city of bonds. So it's time for us to to start using some of that on our on our employees that are better lower paid. So thank you. It is a little off topic of of these union contracts here, but it's whenever we get a chance to talk about something like this, we need to talk about it. So thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Counsel Baker. The Chair recognizes Councilor Borg. COUNSEL Buck, do you have the floor? I apologize, Mr. President, just to seek our acceptance of the committee report. It's okay. Thank you. Council BLOCK. Council BLOCK seeks acceptance of the committee report and passage of Docket zero 682. All those in favor say aye. Aye, aye. Opposing 8.0682 has passed Council BLOCK six acceptance of the Committee Report and passage of docket 0863. All those in favor say aye. Aye, aye. Our policy nay docket zero 683 has passed Council BLOCK six acceptance of the Committee report and passage of Docket 0684. All those in favor say aye. Aye, aye. Our policy nay docket 0684 has passed Council BLOCK six acceptance of the Committee Report and passage of 20865. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Our policy nay docket 0865 has passed. We're on to motions, orders and resolutions. Mr. Clerk, please read docketed 095530960 together. Lucky number 0955 Councilor Murphy offer the following order for home rule petition regarding the disability pension call. Matthew Maurice Duncan Number 0956. Councilor Murphy offer the following order for a home rule petition regarding the disability pension for Henry Jean Duncan.