Chief, deputy go to court for pay
Police board has yet to pay de-amalgamation severance, two months after it was awarded by arbitrator
The city’s two top police officers will go to court to force their employer to turn over a year’s pay apiece.
In papers filed with the Superior Court of Justice on Tuesday, Chief Murray Rodd is asking for $248,920.86, while Deputy Chief Tim Farquharson asks for $210,329.46 from the Peterborough Police Services Board. Their first court date is Sept. 25 at 9:30 a.m. at Superior Court in Peterborough.
Farquharson issued a statement on Tuesday saying the court action is not a lawsuit.
“It is inaccurate to say we are suing the police services board,” Farquharson writes.
He writes that an arbitrator has already ruled they are owed the money, and now they’ve applied to have the courts enforce payment. He adds that he and Rodd wouldn’t be commenting any further on the matter.
Bob Hall, chairman of the police services board, didn’t want to comment either.
“It is a private contractual matter,” he told The Examiner, adding that it’s important that confidentiality be respected.
The money the chief and deputy chief are seeking was awarded by an arbitrator on July 17. The police board had a month – until Aug. 17 – to pay up.
But they didn’t, and court documents show they haven’t applied to appeal the ruling either. They had 30 days to do so.
Rodd and Farquharson were awarded the money as part of their contracts, which include a clause guaranteeing them a year’s pay if the force is disbanded even if they keep their jobs.
That’s what happened on Jan. 1. The local force – Peterborough-Lakefield Community Police – disbanded, and a new force was born a minute later. Peterborough Police is a city-only service with the village of Lakefield excluded as a part-owner with service contracted by Selwyn Township.
Rodd and Farquharson were rehired and the clause giving them each a year’s pay kicked in.
Court documents state the old police board tried to pay them before the force was reorganized on Jan. 1, but that effort failed.
Toronto lawyer Alex Sinclair, one of three representing Rodd and Farquharson, writes about it.
His court document says the board for the Peterborough-Lakefield Community Police had asked the city for money to pay the chief and deputy chief.
“However, the former board dissolved before this payment was finalized,” Sinclair writes.
Rodd and Farquharson were then left wondering whether they’d be offered their jobs back, Sinclair writes.
But on Dec. 17 – about two weeks before the force was reorganized – they each signed a new contract.
Those contracts are included in the court documents. So are those Rodd and Farquharson signed several months prior, their last contracts before the de-amalgamation of the force.
Rodd signed a contract in April 2014 and Farquharson signed in August. Here’s what’s they were each guaranteed:
A year’s salary apiece, a year’s pension contributions and a year’s car allowance if the force is “disbanded, amalgamated or the service is contracted out” and they keep their jobs.
A year’s salary apiece if they are offered their jobs back but they don’t accept.
Three years’ salary apiece if the force is disbanded and they aren’t offered their jobs back.
The court document also contain contracts signed on Dec. 17.
These were signed by then police board chairman Garth Wedlock. They state that the payouts would apply when the force reorganized on Jan. 1 and that the board agrees to pay that compensation.
If the board should balk, the contracts say the matter should go to arbitration. They even specify which arbitrator should be used, if it comes to that. And it did come to that. When Peterborough Police was formed, writes Sinclair, a new polices-board came with it – and that new board disagreed that the chief and deputy chief were owed any money.
He also writes that the new board tried its best to delay the arbitration process as a way to inflate Rodd and Farquharson’s legal bills.
Meanwhile the chief and deputy chief didn’t wait for the deadline of Aug. 17 to let the board know they would take the matter to court.
Sinclair writes that the police board’s lawyer, Craig Lawrence, wouldn’t commit to making a payment after the arbitration.
So on July 27, Sinclair wrote him an email saying they would be “taking steps to enforce” the arbitrator’s order.
Documents filed to court Tuesday included nothing from Lawrence, the lawyer for the police board.