Dom’s Recent Blog Post 18 Apr 10
The anniversary of 3-21 has come and gone. Our OPOA event on 3-21-2010 was highly attended. Roughly 600 people came by the event, I welcomed many retirees and serving members and their families. During the event we had a special visitor, Rob Harrington. Rob is the donor recipient of John Hege’s heart. This topped of our day of remembrance of our boys. Special thanks to Sam and Karin Armerding. Sam cooked all week. His food was spectacular. Also I want to recognize our brother across the bay, SFPOA for donating $500 dollars to this event.
A big welcome back to Sgt. Randy Wingate. Randy is Veteran here at the police department and war hero. He has been completely reinstated. It was a long hard fought battle, however in the end justice prevailed and one helluva cop is back on the street. As Randy I’m sure would tell you LDF put a huge amount of effort into his case. The importance of LDF to us all cannot be under estimated. We do a tough job in a tough town and we need the back up.
Staying on the subject of LDF, our rates have gone up. This I’m sure to most of your is no surprise. But the increase was nowhere near as much as we had feared. The rates have gone up from $38 dollars a month to $53 dollars a month. Although it is a steep raise, it is far less than we had anticipated. I feel our lobbying on your behalf was successful in this case. At the board meeting in April (4-19-2010), we will be discussing how to deal with the LDF increase.
Today’s newest scapegoat is our pensions. Politicians everywhere are blaming their budget mess on our pensions. This phenomenon is not limited to us in California. Nationwide our brother and sisters are taking concession contracts, experiencing layoffs and in almost each and every case politicians are pointing to public safety pensions as being the cause of their budget woes. Every day I am glad that we stepped up last year to save our members and protect the retirement and health care benefits for all. Settling a contract his year would have been a disaster.
I have heard good things and some bad things about our new shifts Remember this is a new shift, is better than the old shift, but there is always room to make things better and more efficient. I have been told the third watch hours are a problem. I hope to “Meet and confer” with the department to solve these issues.
Our board meetings will be changing due to four board members being in the same unit. Keep track of our meetings on OPOA.org.
Until next time be safe and take a bad guy to jail.
