THE ISSUE To trim its budget 9 percent, the city of St. Charles asked employees to bear some of the burden.
OUR VIEW The city’s firefighters wisely avoided a layoff by agreeing to forgo a scheduled 3.75 percent increase.
Leave it to the first-responders to come to the rescue.
The city of St. Charles found that its 2009-10 budget — totaling about $126 million — had to be trimmed by 9 percent from last year’s spending level. Revenues for this fiscal year are expected to be about 4.7 percent less than they were last year, so officials asked all employees to accept a wage freeze.
With the exception of two police unions whose new contracts won’t be settled for a few months, most other employees agreed to forgo the pay hikes. This included employees represented by the Teamsters Local 330 and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 196.
The International Association of Fire Fighters 3322, though, had initially declined to go along with the wage freeze. They were scheduled to receive a 3.75 percent raise this year.
The economy has been brutal on everyone’s finances, and it’s understandable that the firefighters would want the pay hike they were promised. Contracts should be honored, and a cost-of-living increase is reasonable.
As we wrote previously, however, this was a case in which the firefighters should join their fellow employees and agree to the wage freeze. They risked losing a member of their department if the pay increase went through.
We’re happy to see that members of the firefighters union recently accepted the wage freeze. The new agreement with the firefighters will save the city about $181,000 this fiscal year. The contract will be extended through April 30, 2013, with a 3.75 percent wage increase in the final year.
St. Charles officials and union representatives should be commended for pounding out a deal that will enable the city to keep its budget in line. This was an example of everyone in the city coming together to see that the sacrifices necessary to move the budget process forward were fairly distributed.
