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Several individuals “WwkVoter” & “PaulHuff” have commented on the so called zero raise contracts the municipal, fire and police unions agreed to years ago.

As someone who has complied line item by line item budgetary data on the city budget from 2004 to the present and having served on the Warwick City Council and the Finance Committee, I can state that I have the specific factual knowledge to refute this claim of all municipal employees receiving no salary increases over the 3 year period from fiscal year 2013 (Starting July 1, 2012) through the end of fiscal year 2015 (ending June 30, 2015).

Even through the actual terms of the contract indicated no raises for the three years period as reported in a July 3, 2012 article titled “City pay pacts ease burden on taxpayers”, the actual dollars expended on the line items in the city budget associated with municipal, fire and police salary, step increases, overtime and sick time bonus pay, paint a far difference picture.

For the 3 year period from the end of the 2012 fiscal year to the end to the end of the 2015 fiscal year $1.7 million more was spent on these line items for an overall 2.77% increase in salary spending.

In addition when employee healthcare and pension and other benefits are factored into the equation the increase is much more dramatic. In 2015 employee benefit expense was $22.9 million growing to $25.9 or by $3 million three years later. That’s a 13.1 percent increase.

As an example of how salary and benefits were increased under the public radar, consider this. Within the provisions of that contract, all Warwick Police officers for the first time were provided with a $4,000 annual stipend ($12,000 over the course of the 3 year contract with annual $600,000 increase in cost) to fund a new Health Saving Account. Even through the administration during the budget hearing testified that the program would save taxpayers over 20% on the cost of police offers health insurance from the 2012 fiscal year, during the 2013 fiscal year, Mayor Avedisian increased the budgeted amount by $200,000 for police officers. By the close of that fiscal year police healthcare costs increased from the budgeted $2,765,543 to $3,229,613 or over budget by $464,070.

When the administration was asked by me at the 2013 budget hearing to disclose the analysis they performed that determined why the annual stipend was $4,000 as opposed to $3,000 or $2,000 to achieve the promised 20% savings at the end of the year, the Mayor indicated that no analysis was performed. When my follow up question asked, how did they come up with the $4,000 number, the Mayor indicated that they provided the same stipend as Cranston provided for their police officers.

At the end of the 2012 fiscal year, the city received $93.4 million in local tax dollars. By the end of the 2015 fiscal year local tax dollars allocated to the city budget increased to $94.2 million with another $3.6 million taken from the city rainy day fund to support the budget. One year later at the end of the fiscal 2016 year $108 million in local tax dollars was allocated to the city budget. That’s an astonishing $13.8 million increase in 1 year. During the same time period the number of jobs in the city also grew from 799 positions to 822 positions.

The bottom line is that the so called three years of zero, zero, zero in raises was a red herring publicity stunt by Mayor Avedisian that did not reduce the overall city budget but made great headlines in the newspaper and to this day folks such as “WwkVoter” & “PaulHuff” actually believe employee costs were reduced and something great was accomplish the Mayor in his negotiations. Nothing can be further from the truth!!!!