Finance sub-committee meeting

The FSC approved with no debate or any meaningful questions of the Chief for the Police Superiors Union contract. HR director Hamilton said the morale is low, according to the Flagg report and that we lose educated officers to other Towns who pay for education, namely the Quinn Bill. The Quinn Bill was gutted in the last economic slowdown in 2009 by Governor Patrick. How and why we are funding this at a time when we may have to lay off teachers and cops is beyond me. The finance subcommittee are just afraid of questioning the cops. For more than a decade we heard that cops are leaving Framingham for other Towns for higher pay. Now they are leaving for better educational reimbursements. It's the same argument every two years... we don't pay what other towns do... until you give them a raise.

The sub-committee couldn't vote fast enough to have the full council approve the cop contract next week and railed on the other union’s contacts (Librarians and DPW) to be postponed because of the bleak economic forecast for the City.

Another interesting point that went by them was the 16% increase in recycling costs. Mary Ellen said it was the result of people who were at home cleaning.  What a bunch of bullshit that is. The real reason is that we are still NOT watching what we recycle. I've been conducting small scale audits of recycle bins around Town and find that even the Town Hall recycle bin is full of regular trash. A FFD employee, a few councilors and many many residents are not engaged enough to know what should and should be tossed in the recycle cart.
I spoke to Stephan Sarnosky today at the brush dump, which is open for the season now and he tells me when we get back to normal, they are going to do a city-wide campaign to educate the masses, including landlords.

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