By Joyce Kryszak
Buffalo, NY – Managing Buffalo's finances is proving to be a less black and white process than the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority might have originally imagined. The control board Wednesday approved several matters of city operations, but not always with great conviction.
There was a hiring freeze. That's what the control board said when it came in. And that's what it said recently when it refused a request by city officials to hire 103 seasonal and part-time employees. But Wednesday, faced with $2,000 per day in mounting overtime costs, the control board finally gave its blessing to the hirings.
It also approved the Common Council's request to add staff and increase some staff salaries. The Council says the hikes are needed to help professionalize the body. Control Board Chairman Thomas Baker was the lone no vote. He says the city needs to keep moving down, not up.
"I mean we've got to be moving in that direction," said Baker. "And if we don't see that movement at the top, and I consider the Common Council the top, and the administration and so forth, it becomes harder and harder to tell the people at the bottom of the pecking order, so to speak, that they don't have a job any longer."
Baker and other board members were also uncomfortable when it came time to vote on its first collective bargaining agreement. The control board had earlier stated, emphatically, it would not approve any contracts carrying pay hikes. But Wednesday, the board approved a 3.5 percent pay raise over two years for Buffalo's teachers aides. Board members cited the long pending deal, the schools ability to pay and the merit of those raises. But Rich Tobe says the approval should not be seen as a precedent.
"The plan came to us, there's money in it, we approved the plan, and now this is the execution," said Tobe. "So, I think we're compelled to, in this instance, approve it. But I don't want this to be read -- I hope it's not read -- that that is an automatic in the future."
Tobe says they would likely not approve any contracts in the future that he described as "cannibalizing" a work force in order to pay for raises. However, the control board also pointed out that the teachers aide positions previously cut could easily have paid for the raises included in the approved contract.