City cops get 4-year pay hike
New contract includes 2.75 percent raises
DANBURY — Police officers and city leaders have finally settled on terms to extend the Danbury Police union’s contract through 2021.
The final agreement includes annual 2.75 percent raises for officers. But in exchange for increasing the raise, new hires must contribute to their own pension fund and health insurance plans.
“I thought it was fair, and we did it working together in a cooperative spirit,” Mayor Mark Boughton said. “The fact that the union was willing to come to the table on these issues shows they understand the financial situation of the city and those raises are consistent with what other unions got in their paycheck.”
The City Council is expected to approve the agreement at its meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the council chambers in City Hall.
The new contract keeps the basic structure of the union’s existing agreement, which expired last summer, and extends it through June 2021.
The negotiations were particularly cordial among union leaders, the mayor and Chief Patrick Ridenhour discussing the terms amongst themselves in the mayor’s office, Union President Bryan Reed said. It was a far cry from some of the more tense, attorney-laden negotiations of contracts past, he said.
“There’s not going to be any mudslinging with this one,” Reed said. “It took a little longer than we thought, but I think everyone is pretty satisfied with how this contract turned out.”
The primary change to the contract comes to new hires’ pension and health insurance costs.
As of Monday, hires will pay 8 percent into their retirement plan,
up from the 4.5 percent current officers have paid into their pension plans, per the agreement.
All new hires also will be required to enroll in the city’s health savings account insurance plan, which the city has offered as an option for several years but has not been required of hires until now, city Finance Director David St. Hilaire said. Dozens of officers already enroll in that plan, which saves the city money on premiums and taxes, he said.
In exchange, officers will get 2.75 percent pay increases each of
the four years the contract covers, including two retroactive pay raises for 2017 and
2018.
For an officer starting at about
$56,000 per year, the raises will bump his or her salary to more than $60,000 by 2021.
The increased salaries for the about 150 union members will cost about $400,000 annually, St. Hilaire said. The retroactive raises
already were factored into the city’s current and previous year’s budget in anticipation of the expiration of the contract and the city will include the final raises in its budget projections going forward, he said.
The 2.75 percent annual increase matches those the council approved earlier this year for City Hall and Fire Department employees. Those contracts extend through June 2020, negating the need for further union negotiations for several years, Boughton noted.
Attempts to reach Ridenhour were unsuccessful Monday.
“These are not exorbitant raises, they’re about equal to the cost of inflation and even a little bit below what other communities are doing across the state,” Boughton said. “It’s hard to go apples to apples, but I thought it was reasonable and fair. It was a recognition by the union that these are tough financial times and they wanted to get them locked in.”