Elmira City Council Approves Police Pay Raises Of 29% Over Four Years

[TTL News 308]

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ELMIRA, N.Y. (WETM) – In a 6 to 1 vote Monday night, the Elmira City Council voted to approve a new 4-year-contract with the Police Union representing Elmira Police Officers. The agreement includes raises totaling 29% spread over the life of the contract. 

Officers will see a 10% increase in 2024, with back pay, and another 10% increase in 2025. Two more raises of 4.5% each are set for 2026 and 2027.

 

Read the rest here.

[TTL News 308]

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Statement by The Rev. Gary Brinn, Elmira City Council (D-4)

11 March 2024

On May 24, 1972, Norfolk Police Officer Kit Hurst lost his life during a botched narcotics raid. Kit’s little brother was my best friend. His dad was a cop too, as were my grandfather and great-grandfather.

Fifty years later, one of my sister’s closest friends, Rochester Police Officer Tony Mazurkiewicz, was gunned down in cold blood. His killer was sentenced a couple of weeks ago.

I have understood the risks our law enforcement officers face every day my entire life. Those risks are made worse as our communities are over-run by assault weapons and ghost guns, and by narcotics that begin in Communist China, pass through the failed narco-state of Mexico, and end up in our streets, where they kill addicts like my nephew Josh.

We refuse to provide treatment for the mentally ill and chronically addicted, choosing to pay much more in the long-run as they cycle from prison to the streets. This is a reality all of our first-responders face.

Anyone who says I do not support cops and do not understand the challenges of law enforcement is lying to you. I do support law enforcement. But I do not support this contract with Elmira’s police union, despite being the son of a union-member firefighter myself.

We may be in a hot economy, but no one is seeing these types of raises. Elmira’s elderly, dependent on social security, are not getting a cost of living adjustment that looks anything like this. Our teachers are not getting raises like this.

To find this sort of pay increase, you’d have to turn to the CEOs who are destroying America’s middle class and impoverishing our working class. Unless you are one of those CEOs, you probably should be paid more. That isn’t a question. The question is whether we can afford to pay our police more on the backs of our taxpayers. And that answer is no.

This contract exceeds our budgeted contingency, and combined with an un-budgeted overrun in healthcare costs, breaks the city’s budget only two months into the fiscal year. The City Manager and Mayor have had the back of our police officers while stabilizing the city’s finances. Their good faith is not reciprocated here.

The current economic model for policing in small cities is simply not sustainable. Taxpayers cannot continue to be held hostage to this broken system. I’d like to think the union understood this, but since so few of our police officers live in Elmira, I have my doubts.

In the long-term, this strategy is self-defeating, as a city being bankrupted by soaring police salaries cannot take on the quality of life and community care issues that help reduce crime. This contract locks us into a fiscal death spiral that ends up with Elmira as a war zone patrolled by an occupation force.

I appreciate the hard work the mayor and the chamberlain put into negotiating this agreement. And I trust them when they say New York’s binding arbitration system ties our hands, so I will vote to approve the contract today. But going forward, I will not vote for new hires who do not reside in the City of Elmira or have not committed to move into the city. I am formally requesting that the City Manager no longer group all personnel transactions in a single resolution, forcing the council to accept or reject multiple individuals across multiple departments.

I expect the chief and the city manager to come back to this council with significant cost containment measures. If I spend more than I make, there are consequences. The same is true for the city.

If you are not outraged by these numbers, you are not paying attention. I encourage the citizens of Elmira to demand reform, in policing, in how contracts for public servants are negotiated, and most of all in our misplaced political priorities that fund incarceration after there are victims instead of treatment and rehabilitation before there are victims.

Call your representatives in the County Legislature, in Albany, and in Washington, and if they refuse to listen, throw the bums out.

Thank you.