All right, it's five o'clock.

It's five o'clock, so I'm gonna go ahead and call to order our um July 28th, Columbia Pre-Consel to order.

We've got a couple of things, we've got a couple things.

So, labor group, uh, have the opportunity to do presentations for council, and then we'll go into closed meeting, and then we'll open back up because we have two applicants for the Citizens Place Review Board that we'll be interviewing starting at 6 30.

So I'm gonna I'm I'm assuming I'm kicking it over to uh exact permit because you're up first unless that's incorrect.

I'll go first, I don't mind.

Okay.

Well, it's just your slides.

So no, you're totally fine.

I was reading the cues.

I don't have to scream and yell in a mic time because the room's not full.

Theoretically, it is recording.

Yes.

Uh, so we're here tonight.

Um, we are in the middle of the negotiating cycle, uh, and we have reached an impasse um with the T City's negotiating team.

So in a couple of weeks, we're gonna go to mediation.

Uh, so we're gonna take this opportunity to explain to you where we're at, um, our position on why we're in this position, and then I'm assuming when you go into closed session, you'll hear from the city why uh why they're in that position.

So, two major issues wages, of course, uh, always and then uh our post employment health savings plans.

You guys have heard me talk about this as a benefit for our employees.

Um, so I'll just get right into it.

I'm gonna give you an inside look at what it sounds like when we're in there.

Um, and this is wordy, I don't know if you guys have this pulled up, but uh the long of the short is our last bargaining session.

I asked um if our raises pace inflation, that means that our employees get no race.

And the answer to that was well, we set up the pay scale to lead the market, and so if we're maintaining our CPI, we should still be in a position where we're leading the market.

And I followed up by asking, are we leading the market?

And Director Baker said that uh at the time of the implementation of the classic comp study, we were.

However, our employees' salaries do not.

Not individual in salaries, pay ranges, and there's a clear distinction between those two things because we can have a pay range that encompasses our current salaries, but our employees' salaries are nowhere near leading the market, which is where we find ourselves today.

The reality is that we're nowhere near leading the market.

Our raises simply pace inflation.

We can debate about whether we're ahead or behind on that.

I know that uh they will tell you that we're ahead.

I provide a data that we're behind.

Uh, but neither of those things move us clear closer to leading the market if our employees don't make a substantial step ahead of inflation to get to that place.

And as I put there, if inflation is 2.7% and we give employees a 2.7% raise or 3% raise, we really make no extra money.

It's a net zero game.

Um, our perspective is that it's clear the city's using pay ranges to justify the council's philosophy to lead the market, not actual employee wages.

And I don't know if that was council's intent, but it seems to me that if our pay range could go to a million dollars and lead the market, but if our employees can never make a million dollars, it doesn't matter.

Uh so that's where we're at with wages.

Um I'll move on to the pet plan.

I'll come back to this in just a second.

On the pet plan, I asked, what can what would incentivize an employee to use this plan if it's not over incentivized, more than our sickly buyback uh policy currently?

And their answer was that the only incentive would be the members who want to save for post-retirement health plan.

I understand that it could benefit in some way that way.

Uh, but at this point, the city cannot offer any additional financial incentive.

In simplest terms, we simply don't have the money.

And on a follow-up, I suggested, well, this will say the city money.

To which they reply that it won't save the city money because some employees don't get paid for their hours when they leave employment.

The reality is that if an employee has sick leave banked and they use it at some point near the end of their career, they get paid hour for hour for it when they use it.

And if they use all of it, and likely we will have to hire overtime for the some of that time while they're gone, while they're on duty.

So in this instance, the city pays an employee a regulator pay, and we'll likely pay overtime for some portion of that leave, creating two and a half times what that rate of pay would have been.

So if we can incentivize them to put that those hours through the sick leave buyback policy into this pet plan, they're less likely to use it.

And when they get to retirement, they'll have that money saved away for health care and uh costs.

The number one thing I hear from retirees as they're getting close to retirement is the cost of health care in retirement.

What are we gonna do to help pay that cost?

Director Baker said that uh we're assuming everybody's gonna blow their sick leave, and we suggested that even if it's half the employees that use it, it still saves the city money.

Their reply, we don't have the numbers.

No worries, I'll do the work for you.

We do have the numbers.

There were 18 retirements in the last three years.

The retirees over those three years used 14,910 hours of sick leave, an average of 828 hours per employee, but we can assume that everybody burned all their hours.

The highest user used 2230 hours.

The city requires a minimum of 1440 when we use our buyback plan uh to buyback down to.

If the city had to pay overtime on half of that, that'd be 1,115 hours of overtime at two and a half times the city's uh the employees pay.

And over that three year period, a seven seven thousand four hundred and fifty-five hours would have been overtime hours.

If it's just half, the numbers are right here.

Total sick leave used 14,910 hours.

We use an entry-level captain.

Uh, this is a pretty median.

We had some engineers retire, but we also had some chief officers retire.

So kind of found somewhere in the middle.

Uh and the total cost of using those sick hours was 424,000.

If we use their max sick lead buyback, 240 hours a year, the estimated cost would be about 340,000 or a savings of 76,000.

Now let me get to that real quick.

From our budget this year, the cuts that we made, one and a half FTEs we cut out of our budget cost it's cost us 63,000.

We wouldn't have had to make that cost because their personnel costs we can use that money for those FTEs.

Of course, there are variables and we understand that.

I'll concede that maybe not everybody uses it, maybe nobody uses it.

Um however, I don't believe that's gonna be the case.

If we add in the overtime cost for those same 14,000 hours, and we just use half of it, another 200,000 in costs for overtime expenses while those employees were out on sick leave and they could have been using that sick leave in this pet plan to uh have a health care retirement in their retirement.

So our request to you guys, our compensation request, we've asked the city for a two percent across the board raise plus one step and move it and move eligible members one step.

We have to get past this pacing inflation.

If we're just pacing inflation, our employees make no more money, and we're not leading the market, we're still in the median.

Post-employment health plan, we want that incentivized to where a sickly, if members use that plan, it goes in there at 100% of the rate of pay, not 50% like the current sick lead buyback.

It's simple, it's not that difficult.

And like I said, we can save the money.

We know the money is it saves money.

They're the ones that said we don't have the data, so we put the data out there.

Uh so that all happened uh at the June 18 meeting, and then they said we're done negotiating.

So we schedule mediation July 28th, we'll go to mediation.

All three labor groups will be in mediation in the next coming weeks.

Uh, and we'll sit there until we get an agreement that we can find reasonable with the data that we have here.

Uh, we always will come to the table negotiating good faith.

And if our employees are really our priority, saving the city money and giving them a benefit shows that.

So that's all I have.

If you have questions, I'm here for it.

Um Zach.

Can I ask you a quick clarification?

Yep.

Um, so in 2024, when we adopted or for fiscal year 24 when we adopted um classification and compensation plan, right?

That set kind of our policy for how we wanted to lead the market.

Didn't we adjust wages at that time?

Uh yeah, it was a similar 25.

I have to look back at what the exact adjustment was, but similar of an inflation adjustment.

So anybody below the the new salary ranges were moved into the new salary ranges.

Plus, we had an across the board raise or a step or whatever that equaled that was similar to inflation, and then the ranges were moved upward wherever they were at.

But our salary schedule is just built within the range.

It's not built at the top of the range, it's not built at the bottom.

As a matter of fact, when we built it, we built it around the median because that was council philosophy philosophy at the time.

But that salary schedule never made that same adjustment upwards to lead the market.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I've got Vera and then Jackie.

If you go back a slide, you mention um moving eligible members up one step.

Can you clarify what eligible is?

So our with our salary schedule, there's six steps in the schedule.

Uh, once they get to the top, there's no more steps for them to move.

Um so if uh members at the top, that would be uh also probation or firefighters automatically move when they come off probation, so they don't move until they're off probation, regardless of when that is.

So just clarifying the salary range versus wage.

Yeah, so you're saying that the range is at median, but most of the salary is at the bottom of that median.

No, so the range has been adjusted to lead the market.

Okay, but our salary schedule was built within that same range at the median what it was before, and we just simply made inflation adjustments throughout the years.

We haven't really moved that upwards with that.

So it's still within the range, but it's not at the top of the range to lead the market.

So our median is not the range medium.

Correct.

Yeah, Christina.

Um you mentioned the the um training firefighters, the probationary um weren't being paid, or they have like a step up.

Are they still performing all of the duties that are normal firefighters?

So they go to the academy.

Their probation period is 18 months.

The first six months of that, they're in the academy.

The next 12 months of that, they're in kind of an evaluation period on the trucks with us.

Yeah, they do some all of the same jobs.

Uh, but once they are off probation and we say, yeah, you're good to go, then we move them to the next, it's actually a next grade, it's firefighter two from firefighter one.

But if they're doing all the same things at that six they're not supervised, they're not.

They're being supervised, or it's it's it's still a training session for the next year, whether up.

Sorry, I know that's not totally related to this, but any other questions, uh, questions for Zach.

Nope, right?

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Zach.

Do you have slides?

Oh, okay.

You can just have Zex up there if you want, or you can drink all of them.

Okay, there's a TV up there.

I did not notice this.

What is that?

Okay, now we see that's kind of handy.

Well, thank you guys for your time this evening.

I'm here on behalf of CPOA, and we like Zach explained, we have also reached an impasse with the city uh regarding contract negotiations and percent for mediation.

Um, we'd asked the council to uh think of the pay step plan and across the board as two separate things.

And I know from speaking with many of you that many of you do support a pay step plan, not just for police, not just for fire, but for all of the city employees, and and we do too.

Um, but one is not the same as the other, and so a pay step plan automatically advances with completion of successful service to a next step in the range across the board raises, account for uh you know cost of living adjustments uh is generally what they're thought of.

And the city this year, the position has been that that they've offered us one step plus one percent across the board, which is three percent total, which is the same uh as the employee, all of the unrepresented employees, it sounds like are gay who don't have a step plan.

And so all we're asking for is that you fully implement a pay step plan for police and for fire.

Sounds like they're asking for that as well.

Um, and what that means is we're automatically move one step for each year of successful service that rewards successful service and it helps retain people in office, and separate from that should be uh the application of an across the board raise, and that's what we're asking for is we move a step, as many officers uh think for whatever reason uh that we do have a step plan, and so they expect that we're moving.

Um we want to move one step plus three percent, but plus the amount of whatever the city is determined is appropriate for to adjust for COVID, and that is what we're asking for.

And I can hear many of you in your mind saying we have to treat all employees the same, and I just as one counter to that point is that the city opened negotiations with the CPOA asking the CPOA to accept two percent, um, a two percent raise this year, um, and that is less than what is apparently being uh provided to all city employees.

So um we would ask that you prioritize public safety employees over other employees, and I recognize that might not be a popular ask, but let us demonstrate as we have lead the way with the city on how a step plan can and should work, and that is all.

Questions for Don?

Don, when do you start negotiations?

Like when you mentioned you sit down at the table and they offer a two percent.

When was that?

I don't remember the date.

April 22nd.

April.

Okay, okay.

Time my timeline.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you guys.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Dan.

All right, I'm now gonna make a motion uh to that the city council of the city of Columbia, Missouri to immediately go into a closed meeting in conference room 1A, one B of City Hall to discuss the preparation, including any discussions or work product on behalf of a public governmental body or its representatives for negotiations with employee groups person to Section 610.0219 of the revised statutes of Missouri.

And the leasing purchase or sale of real estate by a public governmental body, where public knowledge of the transaction might adversely affect the legal consideration.

Therefore, pursuant to section 610.0212 of the revised statutes of Missouri.

Can I have a second?

Second?

Second by Jackie.

All right.

Let's see.

Barbara, yes.

Valerie, yes.

Sorry.

Yes.

Jackie.

Yes.

All right.