Council delays police contract

CHENEY — Deferment was the order of busines last Tuesday as the City Council elected to postpone decisions on three of seven agenda items — including a new contract with the Police Guild for 2021 – 2022.

The two-year contract includes 2% cost of living adjustments in monthly salaries for 2021 and 2022 over the previous year’s amount. Other than that, City Administrator Mark Schuller said the contract included cleaning up language requiring employees to join guilds, unions or pay dues based on a recent court decision along with changes to the employee sick leave policy due to aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We wanted to front-load the potential officers that we were hiring with some sick leave in the event they were exposed on duty and couldn’t work and we didn’t want them to go out without a paycheck in that particular situation,” Schuller said.

Schuller said the contract had been reviewed by the council’s Finance Committee where there was a desire to see a more “red-lined version” of the agreement, something he was willing to produce. Councilman Paul Schmidt, while saying he thought a good job was done by both sides in negotiating, took him up on the offer in making a motion to defer until next meeting.

“I don’t have anything that’s fatal to any extent,” Schuller said. “But the movement right now is to push public labor negotiations out into the open public meeting. I’d like to see “red lines” to compare this to last contract.”

In tabling consideration of the contract, the council also deferred final approval of an ordinance that would put the agreement into action. The council instead held a pro forma first reading, holding off on the final two readings and passage until the next council meeting. Schuller said once the agreement was in place the salary COLA would be retroactive to the beginning of the year.

The other two items tabled dealt with 25-year licensing agreements with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway to install and maintain fiber optic and water main lines underneath BNSF tracks as part of the city’s “Purple Pipe” water reclamation project. The fiber optic agreement would have Cheney paying the railroad $14,815 for the rights while the water main would entail a check to BNSF for $7,053 for a similar agreement.

Both lines would be routed through a location going under the tracks east of Fern Street and terminating near the city’s Recycling Center. Both agreements are eligible for inclusion in design costs and thus paid for by funding the city is scheduled to receive from the Department of Ecology.

Schmidt asked if the timeline for both contracts meant installation was “imminent” or if it allowed for a chance for review by the Public Works Committee. Public Works Director Todd Ableman said there was a clause in the agreements that would enable BNSF to increase the fee if not agreed to within 60 days, and while the city was “right on the edge” of that, he did ask and received a short extension that would allow for deferment and committee review prior to the next council meeting Jan. 26.

Council agreed to defer the decision until the next meeting.

Council did approve several other resolutions, including an appropriation increase of $13,400 for cover costs and additional work left off of change orders associated with construction of a temporary wellhouse building for the city’s redrilled Well 3. The project originally called for a prefabricated wellhouse building from CXT, but it was delayed beyond the expected delivery date of late May 2019.

Finding itself running up against the summer irrigation season, Ableman said the city asked well general contractor Wesslen Construction to build a temporary structure. The city was not able to negotiate directly with CXT for covering the extra associated costs since Wesslen actually won the bid to furnish the building.

Ableman said they were able to settle with Wesslen on a cost reduction for final installation of the CXT structure, which is now in place.

“So Wesslen did provide the assembly and disassembly and relocation of that temporary structure to the amount of about $28,000 in which they are not going to come after us for that,” Ableman said.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.