We are now counting down the hours until the North Miami Beach City Council votes on the budget for the 2011/2012 fiscal year.  This is almost as nerve wracking as waiting to see who wins the award for best picture at the Oscars.  Then again, this event might more appropriately be likened to the fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier III, which by most accounts is the top boxing match of all time.  On one side we have the city’s Mayor, Council and Manager attempting to pass a balanced budget, making deep cuts while trying to maintain an acceptable level of services for the residents who pay for them.  On the other side is the city’s police UNION, a/k/a International Union of Police Associations/AFL-CIO (IUPA), who can’t quite grasp the concept that its members are on the receiving end of the employment equation.  Both sides are locked in a tense death grip for control of the situation.  On the one hand, you have the City playing by the rules and fighting clean.  On the other, you have the UNION playing all the dirty tricks in their playbook and then some.  It truly is the ultimate battle between Good and Evil.

The thing is, after surviving the nightmare years of destruction and obstruction during the administration of former mayor Myron Rosner and former city manager Kelvin Baker, we finally have an honest mayor, city manager and at least three council members who are actually looking out for the best interests of the residents, especially the ones who pay to keep the city running.  It has been and will continue to be a long, hard road to clean up the mess left in their predecessors’ wake, but these folks are diligently and tirelessly working their way through the labyrinthine trail of deception they inherited from the previous administration.  It has not been easy, but we are finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.

The UNION leaders, like rats who prefer to scurry along the dark, dank tunnels of the sewers beneath the metropolis, all this sunlight is hurting their eyes and giving them headaches.  It’s so much easier for them to accomplish their dastardly deeds underground where no one is watching.  Forced to play by rules they didn’t invent, the UNION rats are having a hard time navigating the waters.  So used to getting their way for years, the UNION is at a disadvantage now that their true agenda has been uncovered for all the world to see.

And, they’re not liking it one bit.  Oh, darn, my heart just bleeds.

Despite the pablum the UNION has been feeding its members, telling them that the city has been unwilling to negotiate with the UNION, I have in my possession a letter dated September 16, 2011, from attorney Luke C. Savage to IUPA attorney Aaron Nisenson, where Mr. Savage states that “the City has emphasized repeatedly during our bargaining sessions it is facing an estimated projected budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2011-2012 in excess of 11-13%.  At our bargaining sessions the City has been, and continues to be, open to all ideas for saving costs, and has time and again requested that the Union consider proposals for cost savings that could assist the City in balancing its budget and that would enable the City to reduce or eliminate the need for layoffs of bargaining unit members.”

Mr. Savage goes on to list in detail all the concessions that the UNION proposed, which totaled $672,917.00.  However, as Mr. Savage stated, the UNION then turned around and “proposed that the City increase revenues, make further cuts from other departments in the City, or transfer funds from other areas within the City to offset the difference between the approximately $1.5 million in savings the City needs to realize from the IUPA bargaining unit and the approximately $672,917 in proposed savings offered by the IUPA.”

So, let me get this straight.  Originally the City Manager asked the UNION to cut four million from its budget.  Somewhere along the way, that $4 million shrunk to $1.5 million.  Someone needs to explain that one to me.  Nevertheless, the UNION offered up less than seven hundred thousand, substantially less than half of what they were supposed to cut.  THEN it has the chutzpah to turn around and tell the City how to manage its finances.  WTF?  Seriously?  That would be like me telling MY BOSS…you know, the dude who pays my salary…how to run his company.  WTF?

On top of that, the rocket scientists at the UNION demand that the City accept their offer, not proceed with layoffs, AND sign a three (3) year collective bargaining agreement with them.  Is this the Twilight Zone or what?

However, in the spirit of negotiation, the City told the UNION that the $672,917.00 would help keep seven out of the proposed seventeen cops that were slated for layoffs, and that if the UNION agreed to the deal, the City would further “contribute to the savings by adjusting its budgeted projected costs for unemployment compensation for those positions (approximately $50,000) and commit those funds to offsetting the necessary cost savings from the IUPA bargaining unit.”

The UNION dudes said they’d get back to the City.  What screwballs.

Mr. Savage also made a counter offer to the UNION, which included their offer of concessions worth $672,917, and added a proposed 9.5% reduction in pay across the board, resulting in additional savings of $760,000, a further reduction in unemployment compensation in the amount of $121,000.00, and offered a one (1) year collective bargaining contract.   On top of this, the “City will also withdraw its proposal for increased employee contribution to dependent care health insurance.”  This proposal was designed in an attempt to save every cop’s job.  Mr. Savage then put the ball in the UNION’s court and requested to meet with them yesterday morning to resolve the issues.

Granted, salary cuts are painful.  I am not unsympathetic to employees who have to swallow a reduction in salary.  But, the truth is we are in a serious recession, which is predicted to get even worse, and employees all over the country are taking cuts – both in the private and the public sectors.  This is the reality, whether anyone gets it or not.  Private sector employees are dealing with it.  Even the employees in the general employees’ union are accepting it, even if they don’t like it.  Why is it that the cops’ UNION is acting as if their members are above everyone else?

The response from Aaron Nisenson, ESQUIRE, General Council for the UNION, was exactly what you’d expect from an organization of thugs and morons.  No wonder the local UNION president Mike Pons is such a jerk.  He’s just an extension of the gangster mentality that makes up the International Union of Police Associations/AFL-CIO.  They’re all cut from the same cloth.

In Mr. Nisenson’s letter of September 19, 2011 to Mr. Savage, he states, “It should now be apparent to all that this “budget crisis” was a manufactured one.  While there are problems to be fixed, the crisis is a fiction.  The 11 million dollar reduction in revenues is a shell game, the 7.5 million dollar shortfall is a fiction, and the claim that cuts were equally apportioned is blatantly false.”

Mr. Nisenson goes on for five pages making outrageous and false allegations against the City, including the City Manager, first by accusing US that we are hiding money from them, and then proceeds to tell US how we should spend OUR money.  Mr. Nisenson tells our City that we need to cut our “inflated Legislative contingency funds, the inflated reserve funds for particular Departments, and the inflated “contribution” to the General Fund.  A simple reallocation of these funds would allow the Police Department to be fully staffed.”  Nisenson then spends the next four pages to write his Great American Novel, with chapter headings and all, how HE would run OUR City.  Blah, blah, blah.  After he attempts to tear the City a new one, WITHOUT ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE TO BACK UP HIS FALSE ACCUSATIONS, he then tells Mr. Savage that he’s “available to discuss any new proposals that the City may have to ensure the Department is fully staffed.”

I don’t know about you folks, but I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy right now.  I’m especially not too keen on ensuring that the “Department is fully staffed” at the moment, either.

By now, you’ve probably heard of the “lovely” comment SOMEONE from the Police Department attempted to post on this blog, which was so vile that I refused to approve it for publication.  This IS a family blog, after all.  Well, most of the time anyway.  This person, who used a computer at the Police Department (not to swift on the uptake, eh?), insulted two of our residents with racial epithets, and gave out their addresses, and specifically told “criminals” that it would only take one bullet.  Real nice, huh?  Yeah, “warm and fuzzy” doesn’t exactly describe my reaction.  But, I’ll save that story for another blog.

So instead of negotiating in good faith, the UNION decided to play chicken with the City.  They also decided to use 17 police officers, dues paying members, as pawns in a very twisted game.  The cops actually believe the UNION is working in their best interest, but the truth of the matter is that by attempting to hold the City hostage, feeding their members total bullshit, and taking negotiations down to the wire, they are throwing their own members under the bus.

All over the country, elected officials, supported by their taxpaying constituents, have finally gotten wise to the Games Unions Play, and they’ve stopped backing down from the bully tactics and manipulations played by them.  Despite their dwindling numbers in membership, the UNIONS still haven’t caught on that they have become as irrelevant and useless as a third nipple.  And even more laughable.  I’m not a gambling woman, but if I were I’d bet that in this boxing match the UNION will go down no later than the fourth round.

Yeah, now I’m feelin’ all warm and fuzzy.

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”