Your Mouth Where Your Money Is

The Board of Alderman met on Monday night and they were greeted with atleast 40 members of the public. Members of the public were there to speak out against the recent Water and Sewer increases. The Board of Alderman voted on September 20th to increase water rates by 25% and sewer rates by 3%, with a combined rate of 10.5%. All members of the public spoke against the increases, the effect it will have on businesses, retroactive billing, and cost cutting measures that they would like to see. The discussion lasted for approx. 1 hour and 15 minutes, discussing several issues.

The Board would not answer questions regarding the retroactive billing of these increases stemming from resident Shawn Pemrick's questioning. The Board did agree to send it to committee, for an opinion regarding this issue. Also sent to Committee was the issue of City Employees paying 20% of their health care premiums. We will be following this through committee and will inform you of any motions coming out of committee. RTU successfully passed a charter change to mandate all City Employees pay a minimum of 20% of their health care contributions upon passage of Town Meeting Day last year. The Government Operations committee deemed such language illegal. The Committee could have changed the wording to allow this change to happen upon expiration of current Union Contracts, but failed to do so. This is why the Board of Alderman were asked to place the item back on the ballot for the upcoming March election. They were asked to change the wording to take effect upon expiration of current Union Contracts.

Following the public outcry Alderman discussed freezing all salaries for FY 2012, motion passed. This will action will warn the Mayor to not include any raises for FY 2012 budget he is currently crafting.

When taxpayers unite, we win!