By Jacob Wilson/Garden Grove Journal
With Mayor Margie Rice recovering from recent surgery, a short-handed Westminster City Council will meet on Wednesday (July 27).
The council will review and vote on the city’s new labor agreements, known as memorandums of understanding, with the Westminster Police Officers’ Association and the Westminster Municipal Employees’ Association. The council will also look over a separate compensation plan for unrepresented employees.
The biggest change to the agreements is a new retirement package for new employees. The agreements require new employees to pay full contributions toward retirement. Current employees pay five or six percent.
But the agreements also require the city to contribute an extra $100 per month for health insurance for employees with a qualifying family plan. And the city must provide employees with one-time stipends based on three percent of salary.
Though the changes are meant to decrease the city’s labor costs while avoiding layoffs, the city would actually face a net loss of $57,000 this year because of the stipends. The city could see savings of up to half a million dollars in each of the next two years.
Results of Wednesday night’s city council meeting are too late for our print deadline. A full story will be posted online this week and in our Aug. 7 print edition.
