PERS Thank You Message

By the time this edition gets out we will have completed our meetings with the City concerning the PERS rate increases and our attempts to mitigate it. This has been an arduous process to say the least. The Executive Board and our attorne yhave met with representatives from the City many times since finding out what the new PERS rates were going to be for 2003-2004, and 2004-2005. I want to personally thank Rob Wexler from the law firm of Silver, Hadden, and Silver for all of his assistance in the negotiations. He was very beneficial to our entire membership and explained the process well. […]

It’s been a long and hard six months of negotiations to change the language in the MOU regarding the PERS contribution rate. I’m writing this the day that we came to an agreement with the City to take the changes to you to vote on. When the MOU was signed no one could have guessed we would suffer the dramatic downturn that we did as a result of 9-11. When we got word from the City about the expected increases in our PERS contributions, I contacted our attorneys at Silver, Hadden, & Silver. Subsequently, the Executive Board started meeting with Rob Wexler to prepare to meet with HRD to try to work out a new agreement. It was a formidable task. No agreement ever satisfies every one, but the APA Board always goes to the wire to get the best it can. I want to thank our attorney for his hard work and I do not believe that we should ever go into negotiations without an attorney again. […]