Mayor’s United!
February 10, 2008
Together with the other regional Mayors, I went to the Eagle Tribune editorial office recently to plead the case for cities.
We have been meeting on a regular basis to formulate plans to deal with what we all see as a long term, sustained budget crisis for cities. We have introduced regional purchasing in an effort to lower costs, and Haverhill will participate this year in regional purchasing for fog line painting and sewer cleaning.
To read the entire Eagle Tribune story, click here
February 12, 2008 at 11:13 pm
The reason why nothing will ever improve in Haverhill and at the state level, is that we allow unions to own us. Members of unions work for us, the taxpayer, not some union president whose job is to demand pay increases every year. Why do they have to agree to join the state health insurance pool? We run Haverhill, not the unions. If there is a state law that mandates that 70% of labor unions must agree to join the pool then theres not much we can do. However, for anything else that “requires union approval” that isn’t specifically state law, we must act. Layoff the workers, hire new college grads, eliminate, ban, or just don’t recognize any form of union in city government. I’m sure theres plenty of new college graduates who would absolutely love working for a city like us right out of college. They’d probably do a better job too. We can’t continue to let unions ruin our city and state. As for the employees of the city who are part of these unions, the number of non-city employees greatly outnumber you, therfore I say we decide what you pay for health insurance, and we decide what you get for a pension.