The union representing members of the Kentville Police Service hopes negotiations for a new contract go better than they did the last time around.
Only two years after signing their five-year deal, the 14 members of Local 107 of the Atlantic Police Association are again ready to begin contract talks with the town on a new deal. That’s because their last one took three years and two councils to finalize.
“We’ve been in contact. We’re in the process of setting up meetings in April,” union local vice-president Marty Smith said Thursday.
The two sides finally went to arbitration in February 2017 after they couldn’t reach a deal on seven items that were still in dispute, with the decision coming down the next month. The contract was retroactive to April 1, 2014.
The negotiations for the last contract concluded with a different town council — elected in October 2016 — in place than when talks started. The mayor and five of six councillors are new, and Smith hopes that negotiations will go as well this time around as they did after the new council was sworn in.
“We’ve expressed that concern, that’s why we’re trying to get the process going as quick as we can,” Smith said. “It’s just too much time in between.”
He said long delays mean that retroactive pay increases — usually paid as a one-time lump sum — are taxed more than if they had been paid out weekly with a new contract, and pension contributions are based on the salary at the time the contract expired instead of the retroactive pay scale.
The town has the same thoughts as well, he said.
“They’ve expressed that they’d like to get it done sooner rather than later. They don’t want it to go as long as it has in the past.”
The contract that ended in 2014 wasn’t settled until four years after the previous one expired.
Kentville Mayor Sandra Snow was out of the country and unavailable for an interview Sunday, but said in an email that meetings are expected to start soon.
