I would like to start some discussion as to what the body feels we should go for. I'm sure the county is not willing to give us money. This could be a year/contract to try to get non or little monetary perks. Some ideas:

1. Increase in sick time. Like all other county employees, we get 4 hrs a paycheck. That's 5% of 80 hours worked for other employees. Let's convince them we deserve the same, 5% of an average 106 hrs (or varying on the pay period) which would be 5.3 hrs a pay period. If not, then throw out the sick leave probation.

2. Kelly days. I'm tired of being one of the biggest departments without Kelly days. I know it's a hard pitch, but I'm old enough and been doing this too long to appreciate more time off with family. Even if that means I lose a bit of overtime. Imagine, if you can, going to the county and offering them a plan to eliminate OT (the 112, 120 paychecks). The politics of that would be staggering. The public at large would demand that the county eliminate OT for us, especially when the unemployment rate just hit over 15%. I would have to look into the different FSLA pay periods. I'm certainly not asking for 3 week Kellys. Most departments are threatening to eliminate those. 6 week would be good. Past negotiations, if I remember right, Chief Mac said to wait for the EMSA takeover. Well, that was last year.

3. Stop wasting money on these Class A's. Give us one for scheduled public appearances, we keep it clean and pressed. Let us go back to t-shirts.

4. Get rid of random drug tests. There just wasting money. A lot of money when you consider all the costs. It's not doing any better than what was in place before, post accident, annual physicals and reasonable suspicion. So what they caught 5 guys one year. That's still lower then the national average per government statistics.

5. Something to control this workmans comp crap. Personal experience, had the not used this damn service, loser PA, third party service, I probably would have been back 4-5 weeks sooner. That's at least 10 shifts of Lt. overtime the county had to pay. We need to get these pencil pushers to realize that. Email with any personal experiences from workmans comp if you want to. I would love to have stack of info against it.

Anymore? comments?