Police contract extended with no layoffs

FRANCONIA » The township and its police officers have added three years to the officers’ labor contract.

The previous five-year contract was set to expire Dec. 31, 2020, but a new agreement extends the contract, Township Manager Jon Hammer said at the Franconia Township Board of Supervisors Dec. 21 meeting at which the board voted to approve the extension.

“There will be no substantive changes to the contract. The only thing we are changing are the salaries for each of those three years,” Hammer said at the meeting, held as a conference call to meet restrictions on public gatherings

because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The officers will receive a 3.75 percent raise in the first year, followed by 3.5 percent in each of the second and third years, Hammer said in answer to an emailed question for this article.

“Overall, the negotiations went extremely well,” he said during the meeting.

The preceding five-year contract, announced in January of 2015, ran from 2016 through 2020 and came in the wake of the township having laid off four fulltime officers, two part-time officers, a part-time police secretary and three other township employees in late 2014 in what the township said was a necessary move to balance the books after years of red ink.

Township property taxes were also increased by 19 percent for 2015.

The five-year contract, which increa sed salaries by 2 percent each year, included assurances that there would not be any further police layoffs. In return, a lawsuit that had been filed against the township by the Police Benevolent Association over the layoffs was dropped.

After the layof fs, the department had 11 fulltime officers, which was the same amount as it had from 2002 to 2007, at which time the crime rates were the same as at the time of the layoffs, the township said in 2015 when the five-year contract was announced.

The Dec. 21, 2020 meeting also included approval of Franconia’s 2021 budget with no change to the tax rate.

That keeps the property tax rate at 2.03 mills, including 1.55 mills for the general fund, 0.15 mills for the fire tax and 0.33 mills for the library tax. For a home assessed at $166,000, which is about the township average, the township property tax is $336.98. Each mill equals $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed property value.