Vote 'No' at the May 26 Town Meeting > My take on the proposed flagman ordinance

"Police Chief John Roche and other commissioners agreed that though the ordinance was brought forward for economic reasons, it is a safety measure that would benefit the town."

Well, now it's too late to change the sense of the ordinance.

If the police union and the First Selectman could not come to a wage agreement across the negotiation table, then it should have gone to arbitration. End of story.

The problem is that Mr. Marconi agreed to the proposed ordinance as part of the town's contract negotiations with the police union. Therefore, for the police union, it is rightfully an economic issue. No matter what anyone else wants to call it, it is built in overtime for police officers & the town has to proceed to present the ordinance for a vote at a town meeting. This will happen Wednesday, May 26th.

Never should a proposed vote by the public be part of a labor contract. It becomes a hidden tax rather than the town's cost of doing business which is budgeted annually.

If it was purely a safety issue -- which I believe it is -- it could be handled by the Police Commission as part of their charge. The Police Chief can shut down any job that he considers a traffic or safety hazard and, by his own admission, he currently has the right to determine if an assignment is a 'special duty' assignment (i.e. offered to any off duty officer) or as part of the regular work day or if a non-police flagman is sufficient to handle the work.

A 'special duty' assignment requires a four hour minimum assignment at time and a half or -- on special occasions -- double time. Except for rare exceptions like a private party or something along those lines, I believe all this could be handled within a normal work day. If it became too much for the current force to handle as indicated by a rise in the crime rate, an outrageous increase in overtime, overworked police officers or something along those lines, the Police Commission could recommend the hiring of an additional officer to take up the extra load in the future. 

In my opinion, this is just another example of why Ridgefield should hire a town centric labor relations firm to negotiate ALL town contracts in the future. Had that been the case, this entire matter would probably not have arisen because it would have been foreseen by a professional negotiator. 

In this case, I don't think the town was well served by our First Selectman.