Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

Well, the mayor is right on this one. I know first hand that the police don't need anymore cop or promotions. that place is so top heavy. and there have been several job promotion that were not needed. these cops sit at a desk. he should put them on the road were they are needed. these jobs belonged to another cop who didn't want to work. so he cried. and then creation was born. the other cop just gave himself a new office, and he just got hired three years ago. Wake up taxpayers. why do we have to promote. My tax dollars go up but my pay is the same. I also heard that there is only one dispatcher at times and several officers on the road. all I know is if I need help or have an emergency. I don't want to be put on hold or my phone call go unanswered because the dispatcher is busy helping other taxpayers. I have a good friend that works there so I knew the truth. these cop are pulling the wool over your eyes.. wake up.. and keep fighting Mayor

(PLEASE READ THE LINK BELOW TO THE VALLEY BREEZE ARTICLE ON THIS)

I think you need to get your facts straight. It's evident that you are not aware that the Police offered the mayor of over a million dollars in savings in exchange for just making the promotions that were past due. In exchange the union is willing to not hire any new officers for 2 fiscal years along with some other savings. But instead of jumping on this offer, the Mayor wants to go to court, spend lots of Town money, and hope he prevails in court. I'm not a betting man but I'd rather have the sure thing rather than a gamble with my tax dollars.

http://www.valleybreeze.com/Freecomm/MAIN-NP-police-union-offer

It doesn not matter what was "offered" - the unions do not run the town, make decisions about finances, or make policy. Offers can and are refused every day. What's an offer? It's always self serving and serves the agenda of one side. We don't pay employees to decide how cities are to be run. Thankfully the mayor knows this and is looking out for ALL taxpayers. How many private sector employees tell the boss how to run the company...

Obviously the first blogger does not know what he is talking about. Like many taxpayers they are misinformed. All they hear is Mayor Lombardi stating " its in the best interest of the taxpayer" or " the taxpayer comes first". Well if that was the case he would have taken the deal offered by the FOP. The taxpayers should know how much money this administration has spent on attorney's fighting frivilous battles in court or through the arbitration process. Labor attorneys get 300-400 an hour. The Mayor just lost an arbitration with the NPFD that was a blatant violation of their contract. I wonder if Mayor Lombardi would operate his business the same way he operates the Town of NP. Probably not becasue he would be spending his own money as compared to taxpayers money. To the first blogger I hope you don't need any services from the police department that arrests 1600-2000 people a year for various crimes and responds to 1200-1400 traffic accidents a year and incorperated in those numbers they respond to 30k-35k calls per year. Hopfully the officer with the office that you mentioned in your blog will get in a patrol car and repond to your call. The Chief who is directed by the Mayor wants to keep this officer in that position accredidation something we are never going to achieve. Your good friend that works at the police station must be oblivious to what goes on on a daily basis. Maybe we should go by the Criminal Justice Dept's. standards of 2.4 officers per 1k of population. That would bring the number of officers to 81.6 verses the contractual 71. The proposal would bring the number to 61 saving the town thousands until 2011. The rank structure has been the basically the same since 1985. Has the town grown since 1985 ? Maybe I'm missing something here. I know when the Govenor cut the state funding another 1.2 million the Mayor was complaining. Here's a dept that gave him 200k in 2008 and is offering 1 million now. The man must be mathematically challenged.

You are right that the unions don't run the town. But what you don't understand is that that offer to the mayor was to try and come to an understanding and resolve almost 20 grievances for blatant contract violations (similar to the one the mayor just lost to the fire department). The FOP could have simply gone forward with all of those grievances. The offer was made in good faith by the FOP to, again, try and help out in this troubled economy. Another thing you are probably not aware of is that the FOP was the 1st union around to pay a co-pay towards health care. Again, it was done voluntarily. The town asked for concession, the FOP gave back over $200,000. The FOP's 1st attempt to resolve these grievances gave the town about a $400,000 savings. The mayor balked on that. The FOP came back with a very detailed savings of over $1,000,000 and the mayor chose to go to court. The FOP was willing to fore go all the legal steps and not go forward with all of the grievance. This would have resolved all of those issues and saved the town up wards of a million dollars. The only the thing the FOP was asking for in return was to get the promotions they had coming contractually anyway. So the Mayor simply had to make those promotions that were supposed to be made months ago and all of those grievance would have gone away and put alot of money in the till for the town. He has decided to roll the dice in court with our tax money.

To Puppy 123 hopefully you are not a taxpayer because he is squandering your tax dollars on deal that is a no brainer. There is no agenda the promotions are going to arbitration anyway. With a proposal or no not. Since the Mayor does not like the police proposal and is mathematically challenged as yourself. We will see him in court with your taxdollars. From what I understand the FOP has the legal defense fund and that is a bottomless check book. So hopefully the Mayor will spend your taxdollars wisely so he doesn't have to promote several police officers he doesn't like. That's what this is all about. At the taxpayers expense.

The FOP was willing to do this or do that for the towne!! Who cares??? You people went to the taxpayer well to many times. Time to come back to reality

Hey Archie, obviously the Mayor has you fooled. The joke will be on you when you get your next tax bill.