There is no truth to the rumor that Quakertown borough council will be replacing the dais in the meeting room with seven holes in the floor to allow the ostrich-members to all keep their heads in the ground; to allow them to continue to ignore the public's growing dissatisfaction with the languishing labor negotiations, and ignore the skyrocketing cost to the taxpayers.
Actually, it is no surprise that they are totally detached from their own town. That has been the state of affairs for years. These are (for the most part) nice people who are simply in over their heads. They lack vision. They lack management skills. They lack business sense. And, most of all, they lack an understanding of how they are being mislead by their own representatives.
They ignored the destructive policies of former police chief Jim McFadden. They ignored the public resentment that lead to the ousting of former president Ray Fulmer. They ignored the multitude of wrongdoings by outgoing manager Dave Woglom.
They ignored the fact that they have received so much bad advice from both solicitor Chuck Fonzone, and the consultants for the way-over-budget municipal pool and botched Krupp site cleanup. They ignored no-bid contracts, illegal purchases, and sewer and water lines that were literally falling apart from a century of neglect.
They now stubbornly refuse to participate in any way in the union negotiation, despite the fact that it has been going on fruitlessly for five months, with a legal bill that is soaring toward $100,000. They stubbornly continue to allow Woglom - who is single-handedly responsible for the unionization in the first place - to be the borough representative at the bargaining table.
And because they are so far over their heads, they stubbornly continue to blindly defer to their labor attorneys' hopeless beat-'em-down strategy. The same attorneys, some billing $340 per hour, who were fired from Hatboro after running up huge fees and accomplishing nothing in three years of union negotiations there. The Operating Engineers have practically begged council to participate, if only to see for themselves what their representatives are doing (or not doing). Would you spend $100,000 without actually seeing what was going on??
The union even offered to postpone talks until a new manager is named, since it is he, or she, who will have to deal with the contract, not Woglom.
The town's attorney replied, "Quakertown Borough is considering filing unfair labor practice charges against the Union for refusing to bargain in good faith and attempting to coerce the Borough in the selection of its bargaining representatives". And the borough then cancelled the two scheduled November bargaining sessions!
And while accusing the union of unfair labor practices, our Scrooges are moving ahead with plans to outsource the public works, electric, sewer, and water departments. Firing men who have worked faithfully for the borough for up to 20 years. It is Woglom's job to "justify" the firings, starting with grass cutting. So he created a comparison of what he claimed would be the costs of continuing in-house lawn maintenance verses outsourcing the work. The result was vintage Qtown...distortions so obvious that anyone except council can see right through them.
According to Woglom, the major cost is "Labor/benefits: 4 employees @ $70,659 = $282,636. The borough has been paying $70,659 for each blue-collar public works employee??? Freakin' unbelievable!!! If it is true, council should resign immediately, and everyone should be laid off.
Of course, it is not true. At their first meeting every January, council passes a resolution establishing "proper billing unit-prices" for the services of all borough employees from Woglom on down. This includes their salaries and benefits combined, on a per-hour basis. The public works employees involved here received $23.04 per hour in 2006. Multiply by 40 hours per week and 52 weeks, we get $47,923. That is the official established borough cost of each worker, not $70,659.
Next deception is the number of men involved in lawn cutting. Woglom's projection is based on "4 employees". But in his accompanying Financial Analysis memo he contradicts himself: "The position of a fourth employee who resigned earlier in 2006 would also not be filled". And borough logs show that the work was consistently done by only three men. The one who resigned, Dave Lang, did mostly road work.
And Woglom also included more than $60,000 in health care costs for four workers (even though only three are necessary), despite the fact that two of the three have opted out of the borough plan, and now cost nothing. The real figure is about $15,000.
The most outrageous aspect of the whole sham is how Woglom created his alleged pricing for outsourcing. According to his memo, he approached "several contractors in the commercial lawn maintenance business who asked that their names not be used" to provide "budgetary cost".
An unverified price from an unnamed source is offered as proof that the job can be done for less!!! Absolutely ridiculous, and an insult to the entire town, not to mention the workers who stand to lose their jobs because of it.
If the ostriches weren't so far over their heads, they would realize that this unnamed source might, just might, have offered a lowball one-year number to allow Woglom to "prove" his point, knowing full well that the price could be increased exponentially in the following years after Woglom is gone, the borough has sold all of its own equipment, and we are at the mercy of those unnamed sources.
At Monday's council session, only David Zaiser spoke up against outsourcing. The ostriches refused to even discuss it, or the union. No sense involving the people in this, right? But four members are up for re-election next year. And that day, the citizens of Qtown can also become ostriches - and ignore them.