City Council Passes Ordinances Regarding Union Contracts

Zanesville City Council held their first meeting of February Monday evening.

Four ordinances were up as emergency measures. They dealt with the union contracts of police and fire. Councilman David Tarbert explained how the union contracts are developed.

“We had a Ways and Means Committee meeting where the administration sat down and there was 75 hours I believe or more of negotiations with some of these unions. The unions are looking for certain things, either to sometimes increase pay, increased health benefits, certainly safety issues. The administration in the city takes all of that into concern and tries to do the best that it can, obviously with a finite amount of city resources to pay for some of those things.”

Tarbert believes that the unions and the city did a great job of coming up with a series of contracts for the unions. He believes they were both fair and equitable to both sides and says negotiations are always in the city’s best interest.

“It’s always obviously best to try and sit down and work out a relationship–work on a relationship with the unions because these are people that go out and protect us and save our lives every single day. So it’s obviously in our best interest to negotiate with the unions and do what we can to accommodate them.”

All four ordinances were passed at Monday’s meeting.