PO Box 8456 Robert Mulligan, President

Surprise Police Employees Association

PO Box 8456 Robert Mulligan, President

Surprise, AZ 85379 Ian Murton, Vice President

MOU NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE

Our negotiations team met again with City leadership on December 20, 2017. This was the second meeting of the MOU process which will conclude in March 2018.

Mr. Frazier and the team discussed most of our proposals and requests rely on money. The City is waiting for the second quarter financial reports in order to gauge where the City is going to be financially. Most topics including post employment healthcare accounts, longevity pay, and uniform allowance were all tabled for further discussion after there is a better idea of the City’s finances.

As part of these tabled discussions, SPEA will be seeking feedback from members in the next few months regarding these topics. The next fiscal budget will have the theme of “compensation” according to Mr. Frazier. It is likely that the city will be seeing a COLA, but the amount is unknown at this time. As our negotiations on these topics continue it was presented that the city is not opposed to furnishing some of these requests although it would potentially impact the COLA. Meaning, for example, if the City was going to give a 2% COLA, but we elected that the post employment retirement health care was important to members, that we could split the COLA and receive 1% COLA and put the other 1% toward funding the retirement accounts. This is a hypothetical situation at this time and none of this information is known or set. Just something to be thinking about as we continue through the process. Look out for the surveys to come out over the next month or so on this topic specifically.

Communications Supervisors have been included as covered under the MOU. There was an issue with their classification and a conflict in City code. The Communications supervisors will remain at will employees, but will be afforded rights of other employees within the association except the right to appeal discipline (which is because they are non-classified employees). The MOU language will also be updated to include actual positions within the department now instead of “civilian support staff”.

The City countered our requests of member donated release time and a full release position with a bank of 500 hours of release time provided by the City. This is a start in the right direction as initially the City was not open to release time. Negotiations and points made and proven by the team have apparently had an impact on that decision. We will still be negotiating this topic further. The City wants to make the bank open to any member of the association to conduct association business. While this topic remains open, we are optimistic about the outcome.

Our next negotiation meeting is February 8th, 2018. Before this meeting we will put out survey information to gauge what is most important to you, the members, as far as the pay related topics are concerned so that we can best negotiate for what we want.

Stay tuned to the website, the SPEA app, and the SPEA facebook page for future updates of the process. The survey questions will be conducted through the app and website.

-SPEA Negotiations Team