Why wait to settle contracts?

Andover teachers rallied last week to protest for a timely settlement of their contract negotiations. Selectmen Brian Major has suggested that it might be advantageous to delay contract settlements until after Town Meeting, while School Committee member Deb Silberstein strongly opposed this suggestion. Taylor Armerding recently posted his views about this debate on The Eagle Tribune 'Soapbox' (click here to see it) and I responded as follows:

I see some practical benefit to settling some of the larger bargaining unit contract negotiations prior to Town Meeting.
The financial tradeoffs and uncertainties that voters must consider are complex enough without adding further ambiguity from unsettled negotiations.

Andover voters indeed make the final decision about how much they will be taxed for the services they desire, but it has not been the town’s practice to ask voters to explicitly decide the level of salary increase that bargaining units should receive.

I suggest that the designated negotiation teams should strive to reach fair and equitable agreements, and that town voters should decide what services they are willing to pay for - having a clear and realistic understanding of what those services really cost.

Andover voters have a recent history of denying requests for operating budget overrides, yet approving appropriations for increasing numbers of staff. Even if barganing units were to agree to zero salary increase for the next three years, the current financial predictions indicate that there would be insufficient revenues to sustain the current number of employees and associated services without an override.

While salary increases can certainly have a significant impact on the magnitude of the current budget deficit, the contract negotiations are not the key financial issue facing Andover voters. The key issue is how much to increase revenues (through fees and property taxes) and/or decrease staff and services across all the departments of the town.