Police contract vote makes comedy of council
Confusion caused by mayor's rush to approve deal, councillor being stickler for rules
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/06/2017 (2472 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The ratification of a new collective agreement with the police union should have been a routine affair at Winnipeg city council’s Wednesday meeting — but it turned into an imitation of a Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch… without a dead blue parrot.
The police contract — which was ratified by union members Monday night — wasn’t on council’s agenda.
To get the deal there, Mayor Brian Bowman had to call a special meeting of his executive policy committee — which he did late Tuesday afternoon — for 9 a.m. Wednesday, and then hope he could get the necessary two-thirds vote to put the contract on council’s agenda.
It wasn’t clear why Bowman was in a rush. The police contract had expired at the end of December. Police can’t strike and the police union had given its own members 10 days to study and vote on the deal.
Highlights of the deal and the deal itself were published on the city’s website late Tuesday afternoon when the special EPC meeting was posted. The deal appeared to be a good one for city hall: a five-year deal, with concessions from police and an annual wage increase smaller than what they got in the past.
The 9 a.m. EPC meeting, where the contract was endorsed, went off without a hitch.
Council’s regular meeting began at 9:30 a.m. Just before they were about to break for an early 11:30 a.m. lunch, Coun. Jeff Browaty (North Kildonan) pointed out the clerk’s department had failed to properly notify all members of council about the morning’s special EPC meeting — and they couldn’t vote on whether to even consider the police contract at the council meeting.
While there were some raised eyebrows among councillors on Browaty’s challenge, it turned out he was correct. During the lunch break, Bowman called for another EPC meeting to be held at noon. Councillors had to hurry back from National Aboriginal Day festivities in the city hall courtyard to make the second special meeting.
(Bowman told reporters they should try the bannock; it was delicious, he said.)
EPC met and, once again, endorsed the police contract.
Afterwards, Bowman credited Browaty for following council rules, but then proceeded to accuse him of unnecessarily delaying the contract debate to score political points.
“We had to redo the meeting. It’s not a big deal,” Bowman told reporters, while questioning why Browaty hadn’t raised the issue the day before. “(He) wanted obviously to wait until (the council meeting) to make a political point — and he did.”
Even with a proper EPC meeting out of the way, Bowman still didn’t have assurance of getting the necessary 11 votes to get the police contract on the afternoon portion of council’s agenda. During the lunch hour, Browaty told reporters he wanted the contract ratification delayed for at least a day to allow councillors to be briefed about its pros and cons.
While still on lunch break, Bowman — to eliminate the need for a two-thirds majority — called for a special meeting of council for 1:20 p.m. just to deal with the police contract.
Again, councillors had to hurry back from the festivities. (No word if other members of council enjoyed the bannock.)
The special council meeting within a meeting began with Bowman and finance chairman Coun. Scott Gillingham (St. James—Brooklands—Weston) praising the police union contract and the benefits it provides to city hall and taxpayers.
“This was a difficult negotiations for the Winnipeg Police Association as it was for the City of Winnipeg,” Bowman told councillors, explaining previous contracts had given police an annual average wage increase of 3.59 per cent, whereas the new deal will give them 1.98 per cent, “net of concessions,” annually for the next five years.
More comments were heard from other councillors in support of the police, but just before 2 p.m., Gillingham suggested the special meeting recess because council rules required the regular meeting to resume by 2 p.m. or it would be cancelled.
With the regular meeting back in session, Gillingham immediately called for another recess to go back to the special meeting to continue the debate on the police contract.
Even Bowman was confused which meeting he was in. He wanted to talk about an item on the regular agenda, but Speaker Devi Sharma had to tell the mayor that council was back in the special meeting dealing with the police contract.
“Oh, OK… you’re absolutely right,” Bowman told Sharma.
Twelve minutes later, the council ratified the police contract by a 15-1 vote, with only Coun. Shawn Dobson (St. Charles) voting in opposition.
The special council meeting adjourned and they went back to the regular council meeting.
aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca