On the advice of its new solicitor, the City Council adjourned a special meeting Friday night without taking a vote on the tentative agreement reached between the administration and Warwick Firefighters, raising the specter that approval is not a foregone conclusion.

Although some council members believe a special meeting should be held to consider the contract, Council President Steve Merolla said Monday no meeting had been scheduled and that the contract is docketed to be heard Jan. 6.

Merolla called on the administration to clarify the language in the contract.

“Is a contract supposed to be clear or ambiguous?” he asked rhetorically.

“No matter what side of the debate you fall on there’s no way you can agree the language is not ambiguous,” he said. Key points that lack definition he listed as the length of a workday, sick leave that is left to the discretion of the chief and that the contract would take precedence over ordinances.

Yet, even with concise language, Merolla has issues with the contract.

He doesn’t see it addressing the escalating cost of health care for retirees even though it would create a fund for new hires.

“It is just going to add more debt to what we know is unsustainable,” he said.

At the heart of the decision not to proceed with a vote Friday was the ruling of Bill Conley, who succeeds John Harrington as solicitor to the council, that the charter was not followed when two members of the council were not personally served notices of the meeting hastily called by Ward 3 Councilman Timothy Howe. Under the city charter, a majority of the council – five members – have the authority to call a special meeting provided all members and the mayor are served notification at least 48 hours in advance.

Ruling based on charter

While they learned of the meeting on Wednesday, two members were not served notice. Council Jeremy Rix was boarding a plane to go on vacation at the time and a constable evidently delivered the notice intended to go to Ward 7 Councilman Steve McAllister to his former address.

On Friday, Merolla questioned if the council could take a vote.
“I’m reluctant to advise you that one can waive a charter requirement,” Conley said. “I’m very concerned about proceeding with the meeting.”

One side of the chamber largely comprised of residents questioning the contract and the rush to gain get it approved applauded loudly. The other side, mostly firefighters in stunned silence, stood to leave. Their union president, Michael Carreiro, was disappointed. He said a vote should have been taken on Dec. 16 as the contract was on the council docket.

Asked if delaying action on the contract would jeopardize the tentative agreement, he said the union was looking for a vote whether for approval or rejection, “so we can move forward.”

In a statement Mayor Joseph Solomon said, “I respect the council majority’s attempt to do the people’s business and their honesty and commitment to transparency, which has been a priority of my administration. I stand by this agreement and after two nights of public comment, I look forward to the council voting on this issue.”

On Dec. 16, after more than six hours of deliberation, the Finance Committee voted 2-1 to recommend council approval of the tentative agreement. By then it was after 11 p.m. Following an executive session, the council reconvened, but by then it was after midnight and Merolla adjourned the meeting, saying the contract would be on the docket of the Jan. 6 meeting.
Following Friday’s meeting, Howe explained he pushed for the special meeting in order to lessen the backlog on the council docket that has delayed action on a variety of projects since May, including road paving contracts, claims resulting from poor roads, quarterly department reports, appointments and grant approvals.

“Backlog stalls a city. Stall tactics do not help a city. The meeting tonight is giving us the time to conduct our due diligence on this contract,” Howe said in a statement he was prepared to read, but didn’t because Merolla closed the session.

Opened to public comment

Although the Finance Committee voted on the tentative contract on Dec. 16, which customarily would end discussion and additional testimony before going to the council for a vote, Chair Ed Ladouceur reopened the meeting.

The administration did not provide new testimony nor address questions raised on Dec. 16. But the action reopened the contract to public discussion with some surprising results – including the offer of Gayle Corrigan, a Warwick resident with extensive experience in local government affairs, calling for an independent third-party analysis of the fiscal impact of the agreement. She called firefighter contracts the most complicated of municipal bargaining agreements and found the mayor’s claim that it is “revenue neutral” impossible. She offered to personally pay for the study, which she thought would cost $10,000 and take about three weeks to complete.

Others advised the council the city couldn’t afford the contract.
Patricia Beauchemin, a 45-year resident of the city who made a point that both she and her husband were union members before retirement, said “there are limitations” on what the taxpayers can afford to pay retired municipal employees. She said she assumed responsibility for the cost of health care on retirement.

“We’re taking hits in increased taxes, we can’t do this again,” she said.

Resident John Simoneau likewise said the city can’t afford the contract, urging the council to let the administration renegotiate it and if that fails to go to arbitration.

Roy Dempsey applauded the fact the contract is open to review yet questioned why the administration hadn’t sought to tighten procedures so as to reduce costs. He said the city hasn’t been able to cut over time costs that consistently exceed the budget and that the contract fails to spell out the proposed 24-hour shift schedule. Resident Don Fife said Warwick firefighters are paid an average of $95,000 as compared to a national average of $63,000 and that Warwick residents are paying the seventh highest property taxes in the state.

The cost of city government and the services rendered, including schools, came under attack by Steve Sullivan, who urged the council to act on behalf of the taxpayers. He was also critical of the special meeting and the haste in which it had been called.
“Why is it that we raced this through … like a bunch of middle school bullies,” he said.

“I’m not going to sit here and get blamed for calling the meeting,” Ladouceur said. He said he only learned of the meeting when served he was served by a constable. Nonetheless, he found a positive to the turnout, albeit on a Friday night before Christmas. He said the people who are paying the tax bills are paying attention.

After the meeting, Ward 1 Councilman Richard Corley took Howe to task for not at least giving him the courtesy of a phone call before being served. He also hit out at the mayor.

“Ringling Brothers came to town and the ring master of the agreement stayed in the corner office,” he said.

Corley questioned why the parties couldn’t settle the ambiguity of the starting rate of pay for the first year of the contract. (The tentative agreement calls for a zero pay increase in the first year followed by 2 percent increases in the second and third year. However, the contract ending June 30, 2019, is still in arbitration, thereby the base pay for the current year has still not been resolved.)

Questions were again raised Friday night by Warwick businessman Ken Block and residents Rob Cote and Bob Cushman over the OPEB post-employment benefit trust fund new hires would be required to pay into at the rate of 2 percent of their pay and what constitutes a day when calculating sick time and vacations. Block argued the trust fund amounts to an annuity and would only decreasingly offset the escalating cost of health care. Cushman called the fiscal note provided by the administration “defective.”

Both union treasurer Brandon Ingegneiri and secretary Nicholas Varras said that due diligence went into drafting the agreement and that the union is sensitive to the burden of the taxpayers.
In a press release, Zach Colón, a candidate for the Ward 9 seat held by Merolla, said as a Warwick student he experienced the effect of the teachers not having a contract for an extended period.

“Our firefighters and first responders work hard to provide important services to residents of Warwick and they all deserve to have a fair and up-to-date contract,” he said. “Too often, Warwick residents see nonstop contract disputes for city employees, rather than our government spending the time and energy to get important issues taken care of in the city.”

He accused Merolla of putting “the interests of political theatre before the interests of Warwick when he abruptly ended the meeting after determining that one of the councilors wasn’t ‘properly notified’ of the meeting he called for himself. This last minute stall tactic of going line by line of the rules to find any reason to delay the meeting by the Council President is unacceptable.”