LookingNorth: Here we go again!
The latest from our neighbor LookingNorth:
One more time, we see the double standard at work...
From Maplewood Voices:
"Mr. Rossbach and Ms. Juenemann voted against adopting the 2007 labor contracts as the only information they were supplied upon which to base the required council ratification was a list of the unions involved."
On the one hand, the queen mayor insists on having more info on the DeSoto project before they move forward. Yet, when it comes time for the labor contract ratification, it is OK for our formerly long-time unemployed city manager to provide a shred of barely related info on the subject. A nice touch was trying to hang the stink of waiting for their increases on Rossbach.
Does she simply have a memory issue (that could be taken care of with drugs)? Or is she really that unethical?
posted by Frostbrand @ 5:27 PM
10 Comments:
At 2:00 AM,
Anonymous said…
Trollette speaking...
I just don't get it. The unions sign off on the contracts and don't have a problem with them. The manager is ok with the contracts. Longrie, Hjelle, and Cave are ok with the contracts. And most importanly, the employees are ok with the contracts.
So Rossbach and Jueneman vote no? Unbelievable! And these two say that they are standing up for the employees?
Who are they trying to fool?
At 7:27 AM,
Anonymous said…
What a moron, you are trollette! Would you vote on something you had not even seen? That is the issue here not whether everbody has agreed to it or not. Why in the world is it ok in your world to totally shut out two members of the board? Who, by the way, were elected by the citizens to represent them just the same as the other three. I don't care what the sky is like in your world but that is not ok. What if the shoe were on the other foot? What if there was a three way choke hold the other way and diana and erik were totally left out? Would that be ok in your world?
At 12:09 PM,
Anonymous said…
Are you telling me that those negotiation meetings were closed to council members? I doubt it.
These council members can choose to get more or less involved. It is their choice. Did Rossbach or Jueneman ever attend one negotiation session? Doubtful, and who is at fault for this?
But what this all boils down to is that we all know the major issue of every contract is $$$. The council already clearly told the manager what acceptable to offer.
Just last month, the council approved a 2007 budget which included pay raises. This essentially was the council's offer to the staff. If the employees agreed to it, then all the council has to do is sign the contract. If the employees wanted more, then the council would have had to either reject the contract or reallocate new money.
What more was Rossbach and Jueneman looking for? They already approved the raise in the budget. Can somebody else tell me what else they were looking for?
It is easy to complain in general, but it is more difficult to complain about specifics. I see no specifics.
At 4:50 PM,
Anonymous said…
Your argument still does not make any sense. If you read the minutes or were even at the council meeting Rossbach and Jueneman made it clear that they were only voting no because they had not received any information as to what they were voting on. Which, I may point out, they had always received in the past. It has nothing to do with the contracts themselves. You are trying to turn the argument into something that it is not. Smoke and mirrors is the only way to defend the three goofballs and their lackey.
At 3:24 AM,
Anonymous said…
Let me see here. The budget for 2007, adopted in 2006, set the amount that they were going to pay these employees in these contracts. And so why didn't Rossbach or Jueneman get the message?
There is no smoke and mirrors going on here. Rossbach and Jueneman continually claim that they represent the employees. So the employees say that they like the contract. Their business agent friends say they like the contracts. Sounds like issue closed to me.
At 9:24 AM,
Frostbrand said…
Let's point out that we looked at the budget, such as it is, a while back:
http://maplewoodmn.blogspot.com/2007/01/where-is-money-going.html
As we discussed there, the budget includes $863,770 in net new spending on personnel -- in other words, that is in addition to the "savings" (which I think Copeland said were $700,000) from the job cuts. It seemed as though this could mean 8% to 10% or more salary increases for the average Maplewood employee.
Even on a straight comparison of personnel services 2007 vs. 2006, the budget (page 11) shows an increase of 5.1%. But remember, we have "reorganized" away a lot of city employees, eliminating their positions and/or replacing them with newer, lower-paid staff, so the increase for continuing employees should be higher than this.
Apparently these unions are accepting 3%. Was a whole lot more budgeted for them, so the city will be spending less than expected? Or is the net city staff head count increasing a lot more than we have been led to believe?
If personnel costs are going to rise 3% rather than 5.1% (if those are even numbers we can validly compare, which is impossible to tell from the so-called budget we have to look at, and without having the union contracts to see), this may mean that the city will have a free $355,670 in its budget. If that's the case, then the council should be considering what to do with that money (lower taxes? a reserve to hold down increases next year? spend it on accelerated road repair?), shouldn't they?
Our troll can make up her usual list of "things that might be true, and if they were true, would make this all make sense." However, our council people have a job to actually ask these questions and get answers, and understand what they are voting on, in order to properly make decisions about spending our taxpayer money. Longrie/Cave/Hjelle abdicated that responsibility, by just rubber stamping what Copeland stuck under their noses. Or maybe they were kept in the loop, as often seems to be the case, and Juenemann and Rossbach were shut out.
In any case, we in the public have been denied the opportunity to understand what is going on.
Since they were approved, will the contracts appear in the official minutes of the meeting, so we can at least learn after the fact what our council signed on to?
I'm disturbed that we were told in December that barely more than a week was plenty of time for the council to study, understand, and vote on the budget; now, in 2007, they don't even get that -- they're expected to vote to approve budgetary items that they have not even had the chance to see.
At 10:13 PM,
Anonymous said…
It is a simple fact, the council in December voted on a budget for 2007 which contained an increase for unionized employees.
The rest of this budget mumbo jumbo has nothing to do with this fact.
I'm also wondering why Rossbach and Jueneman didn't ask questions much earlier, rather than a few minutes before the vote was called.
I have noticed their behavior is similar on many issues. They complain about not having enough information, but I am wondering if they tried to get information before the meeting or if they complain about not getting information for the very first time at the meeting moments before the vote is called. The answer to this question coudl change my prospective on their behavior.
If they asked staff for information the Friday before the meeting and staff brushed them off, that is one thing, but if they are springing these information requests during the meeting, then that's something else.
Don't these council members get their packets 3 or 4 days before the actual meeting?
At 11:46 PM,
Frostbrand said…
Our troll wrote:
> if they are springing these
> information requests during the
> meeting, then that's something
> else.
I guess you didn't watch the meeting or review the council packet (available online) ahead of time. Then you would know that in this specific case there was no information available in advance of the meeting.
You see, the crux of the issue is that they should have had the information in hand to review the week before the meeting. Even the day before the meeting would have been nice. Heck, even if copies of the contracts could have been brought to the meeting itself so that the members of the council could have spent five minutes looking them over, that would have been at least offered a minimal opportunity for oversight.
Instead they were each given a few pieces of paper. From what Rossbach said at the meeting (and no one contradicted him), one of those pages simply listed the three unions involved. The other papers were about ongoing negotiations with the other unions.
The attorney, Bethel, who negotiated on the city's behalf did not think it unreasonable to delay the vote until the council could actually review the contracts. Copeland said something about not wanting to delay pay raises, but for all we know the contracts might make raises retroactive to the first of the year anyhow (that wouldn't be so unusual, would it?).
Most likely the contracts are perfectly fine. What this incident illustrates, however, is that once again this council majority takes shortcuts and doesn't want to bother with the process of good governance and responsible leadership.
Lots of people sign legal documents without reading them. Most of the time it doesn't matter. But the principle that you should always read something over before signing on the dotted line is to protect you from that one time when failing to understand what you're getting into leads to very bad consequences.
A failure to study the fine print is a recurring flaw of the council majority and Mr. Copeland. (Recent example: not checking on the laws about the Police Civil Service Commission when firing Banick -- call that a $50,000 oversight, since that's our insurance deductible when we lose the case.)
If anyone was hoping they are learning from their mistakes, the answer seems to be no.
At 3:25 PM,
Anonymous said…
In response to the troll's post at 3:24 AM ...
With all the shenanigans going on, I think it is very wise that Rossbach and Jueneman want to take a look at the language of the contracts. Especially since the Employee Handbook and polices were revised, I'm sure they just want to make sure the average joe employee still has some protections. Lord knows what Copeland has written out of or inserted into the fine print of those contracts.
At 1:55 PM,
Mr. Brilliant said…
If Rossbach is so worried about the employee handbook, then why doesn't he just put it on the agenda for review, and then call a motion to adopt it with the understanding that counccil approval will be required for any future changes?
It seems like more people are worried on Rossbach's behalf than Rossbach is worried himself.
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