I rarely give credit to council after a meeting but here goes.
Good job.
You guys looked out for the financial well-being of the city. And it appears you all took a stand collectively. Thats a first.
Mr. Napoli, I am glad you stood up when the Police president was trying to bully you. The guy was so unprofessional and unprepared what did he think the outcome would be?
The city will be fine and I highly doubt 30 officers leave this year. And if they do, so what! They will be replaced.
The police have milked the city enough over the years. And they are getting a new 50 million dollar station. The Greed is insane.
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26 comments:
Well said ABE !! I totally agree it’s about time they grew some balls to this administration !!!
I call bs. The Police Dept, Mayor, and council will just rename it, rebrand it, and pass it.
D.O.L.L.A.R. — Deferred Officers’ Lucrative Lifetime Accumulation for Retirement
I think every employee should be offered the option of a drop pension.
"...I highly doubt 30 officers leave this year. And if they do, so what! They will be replaced."
Yet at the same time people are whining that the police lack the necessary training. Either police officers are replaceable and easily trained or they are not. Can't have it both ways.
I cannot begin to understand the continuing stupidity of the Tuerk administration. Time and time again they present an initiative that will require significant financial commitment of taxpayers funds. Instead of coming to council with sound data they arrive with assumptions, “I don't have that data”, and vague statements like “we wont know until it is funded”.
Kane sat there last evening and said “we can’t predict cost”. You can predict costs Mr Kane. What usually happens in situations like this DROP is there are worst and best case scenarios presented. You have that with the actuary study the city paid a significant sum of money for because Patel is a basic math type finance director. The numbers are there, pay attention!
The continued statement that this is a “negotiated benefit that has already been entered into between the city and FOP” is a lie. The mayor preemptively signed the document without following proper contracting procedures. You can’t enter a contract without council approval.
The FOP Deputy mentioned that this is a benefit similar to Act 47. I assume he meant Act 49, since 47 is a financially distressed municipality law. Act 49 is also a law that governs how municipalities fund their pensions. Act 49 that council voted on is not an optional benefit, it is law. The DROP is optional and not required to be adopted. Get your facts straight and stop using erroneous information to try and justify your argument.
Lastly, no one needs to apologize to the officers that are impacted by the delayed vote , as was mentioned by the FOP Deputy. If an individual who is retiring in December hasn’t made post retirement plans at this point and has been just waiting since Feb without a plan B, they are a fool. Maybe not passing the DROP and letting them retire is actually the best for the city?
Remember FOP members YOUR mayor signed this agreement without following procedures and it is insane to blame council for wanting to pause the vote until the fiscal health of the city can be evaluated by a competent authority. YOUR mayor tried to rush this through and now the council is being attacked publicly by the FOP Deputy for following a procedure? Insanity.
It sounds to me like HR, legal, and finance once again failed to advise the mayor that he is a little city mayor responsible to council and not a supreme leader. Notice none of them were present last night.
The F.O.P guy has no clue what he's doing. In way over his head. Your analysis of the drop is spot on. Sounds like when the Mayor said Council didn't hire the Investigator who did the discrimination interviews properly. He should learn his job because obviously he had no clue . AGAIN!!!
Is it possible that the FOP tricked the Mayor and slid the contract in with his hotel and airline receipts? He may have not known that he was signing a contract and thought he was signing another trip report or something similar
I miss the CHATT (City Hall at The Table). We could voice our concerns to City Hall and we were listened to at least..
Now we the BLOCC —the Bozo Loser on the Corner Confessionals - where the dumbass mayor sits under a tent on a random street corner looking like a drugged out spaz handing out Kingdom of Heaven fliers. .
Well done City Council!
Buahahahahha! Does he know the Lehigh County Commissioner by chance?
I just had the pleasure to watch this house fire of a meeting. If anyone who was ever anti union wanted a propaganda piece to show how bad some unions’s leadership is, this is probably the best case study. That FOP official walked in there so smug and cocky almost as if the city residents owe the police this. When questioned, he immediately turned hostile, questioning how dare council looks at the financial
Impact of this. As expected, he tried to scare the city that officers will leave, which council saw right through. The most astonishing part of the meeting, once he realized they probably won’t be getting the DROP, was when President Napoli apologized that they will have to do the fiscally responsible thing and wait until mid October for the finance report. To which, and I still can’t believe this, the FOP official actually said “apologize to the 30 officers who don’t know if they’ll have the DROP”. That is one hilarious and pompous statement which absolutely proves the mindset of the FOP. Those officers who can/will retire will have high 5 figure, and some even 6 figure pensions for the rest of their lives. AND YOU WANT THE COUNCIL TO APOLOGIZE FOR BEING FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE AND NOT JUST HANDING OVER THE DROP??!!! The FOP seriously needs to reconsider who represents them.
A complete an udder embarrassment on the FOP. That President was disgraceful. Waddles into the meeting like the city owes them more. They have a contract up this year as well. I think he screwed them with that as well
I was actually proud of the council as a whole for the first time in a long time. They showed unwavering unity and resolve last evening.
I hope that they are also this tenacious when the budget comes around.
The administration still owes a better explanation of the $6.5 million needed for medical and insurance claims. The reasons given of higher claims are highly suspect: it appears Councilman Binder saw through the bs and knew the healthcare is continuously underfunded.
Mota seems to shy away from tough decisions. Is she afraid she will lose an endorsement from the FOP or something bigger?
Don’t get it confused. The Fire department is not to be forgotten. They also take as much as possible from the taxpayers…and Tuerk bends over backwards for the fire union.
Utter.
Unless you are talking about cow udder’s, in that case carry on.
I've never seen a union official act like that. Arrogant and unprepared. He should apologize to the 30 officers for such a shitty presentation.
Anyone else wondering why there was even a meeting? If the FOP didn’t present anything new and the Council had a prepared statement, what was the purpose? Just say there won’t be movement until the study results are known.
He shouldn't even be the President. Clueless Bozo.
He was rushing the meeting because the buffet was closing at 9pm
What I’m assuming, and I could be wrong, but the FOP requested the meeting to try to explain the advantages of the DROP once they learned council may not be totally in favor of it. I believe they thought this would be an easy explanation and could sway council easily. The FOP president was obviously very wrong and completely embarrassed himself and the union and showed themselves for who they are, just greedy union members who want a pay day.
Are we really talking about 30 officers leaving because they won’t get the DROP? How many officers are there on the force? 30 doesn’t even seem like a lot. How many is that above the number that would normally retire?
No. This is a common tactic of the FOP, especially Allentown. When they need some “retention type bonus”, they try to scare the city into believing every officer who could possibly retire will in fact retire. It has NEVER actually happened, and never actually will. Even when a large amount of officers leave, the police force doesn’t miss a beat and no one would notice a drop in police presence. In fact, with crime being down so low now, I think it’s the best time to think out the ranks, especially the highest paid ones who are the ones eligible to retire. Don’t believe the FOP rhetoric, they are literally arguing to award themselves $500,000 bonuses so take anything they say with a grain of salt.
Wow! I honestly can't remember the last time city council did the right thing. This said, this was a very appropriate time to do so. As well, as we can see from the brevity of Abe's post good government provides little fodder for satire and standard humor.
While we've all enjoy that, we've had way to much of that for far too long, let's hope this correct action isn't just a one off. The only reason Allentown has so many problems is because those who control it have repeatedly demonstrated bad judgment. Allentown could just as easily improve if those in power simply governed more intelligently and effectively.
This mess is all Tuerk’s doing. He tried to use tax dollars to hopefully make the police like him. Little does he know that they hate him either way.
It is sad to me that the police seem to want to make us taxpayers believe that they could work anywhere, but choose to work in this bleep of a city as if they are doing us a favor and we should therefore reward them for their sacrifice. I have a deep respect for first responders, but their unions? None.
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