SWAMPSCOTT — The Police Union is accusing the town of misstating the amount of American Rescue Plan Act money it is allocating to the department and how many members it has — but town officials say the union is simply misinformed.
Union President Kevin Reen said the number of employees reflected on the chart sent to the union by the town is 33, and the average compensation for one person from the ARPA amounts to $5,323. But, according to Reen, the department only has 27 employees.
“There has been a misrepresentation of our staff, and what we were being paid for ARPA,” said Reen.
“We have 16 patrolmen, five sergeants, four lieutenants, one captain, and one chief, making that number 27,” the union said in a statement.
The document says that the police department currently stands short six patrolmen and another officer is out for an extended time frame due to illness. This causes a significant impact on the department, according to the statement.
“We have been forced to pull most of our detectives division to work patrol,” said the statement.
The town’s Director of Finance and Administration, Amy Sarro, said the 33 number came about because the town included officers who have either retired or resigned since the agreement about how to dole out the funding was reached.
Reen said that the police department had previously negotiated their contract, and it was ratified by the union and accepted by the town, and approved through the Board of Selectmen, and the understanding of the police was that they would be compensated $1,500 from ARPA funds for every union employee within the police department.
Following a request by the town that the department leave civil service, the union reached an agreement that would compensate members via a $5,000 payment, split between July 1, 2021, and July 1, 2022.
The difference in the number of the police department employees who receive the ARPA compensation mainly comes from the fact that the officers who were employed on the date of one of the two bargaining agreements were signed and who later resigned or retired in good standing receive the compensation. Sarro noted that the ARPA payment was inclusive of $2,500, $1,500 and other negotiated compensation.
“They don’t get to negotiate the funding source for their compensation,” said Sarro.
Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald said that it has been a very difficult few years for staffing in general, and that “some candidates” have been issued conditional offers and are not represented in those numbers.
“Change is never easy, and even this week we are interviewing a number of candidates to try to fill some of these positions,” said Fitzgerald.
He said that Swampscott has a wonderful police department and solid police contracts with significant contractual payments. The town and the police have negotiated several successful bargaining agreements over the last several years that have worked well both for the town and the union.
“A lot of it has helped us to evolve management rights. We were able not only leave civil service, but we also changed a provision in the contract that had guaranteed overtime in the contract. It was quite expensive and quite lucrative in terms of the economic benefit for the staff, and we have negotiated changes to help strike a balance,” said Fitzgerald.
Oksana Kotkina can be reached at [email protected].
