Terms and conditions of what the Eau Claire City Council can offer municipal workers in their next contract will be discussed in closed session Monday night.
Those who are part of the negotiations said one thing in bountiful supply is uncertainty of what the future holds for city revenues and union rules.
"This one will probably be a little bit different because you have the repair bill out there, the budget bill out there and the potential shortfall," said Councilman Bob Von Haden, who's been on the city's negotiating team since he was first elected in 2003.
Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill's proposed cuts to collective bargaining would affect the majority of city workers, but not police and fire department employees. However, that bill is in limbo as 14 Democratic Senators remain out of the state and it cannot be taken up until at least one returns to the Capitol.
"I would say it's no secret at this point there's a lot of uncertainty in collective bargaining agreements in the state," City Manager Mike Huggins said.
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The city's still combing through Walker's almost 1,300-page budget proposal, which was released Tuesday, to find ways it would impact Eau Claire.
So far, the city knows it will get $1.2 million less in shared revenue, Huggins said. But the exact impact to Eau Claire of a 10 percent cut in state transportation aids and aids to municipal services is not yet known. In addition, the city does not yet know if Walker's move to cut collective bargaining rights will deprive Eau Claire of $1.7 million in federal funding for bus service.
The contract negotiations won't happen "in a vacuum," Von Haden said, and the city will pay attention to what happens in Madison. But the difficulty is that everything advanced so far is a proposal written by Walker, which can be amended by legislators.
"We will use our normal approach to this," Von Haden said, "but also saying that everything we talk about may have to be adjusted based on what happens in the state."
Both Huggins and Von Haden noted that the contract discussion is perhaps a couple weeks earlier than usual, but negotiations typically begin in March.
"This is about the time we'd start our normal bargaining process," Huggins said.
All city union contracts expire June 30, as does its health insurance contract.
Other items on the agenda for next week's Eau Claire City Council meetings:
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Public hearings on several street projects will be held Monday night before the council votes on them Tuesday afternoon.
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An ordinance change allowing residents to keep three dogs -- instead of the current limit of two -- will be voted on at Tuesday's meeting. The change also would eliminate a process where people can request a variance to have more dogs than the limit.
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A work session on city plowing and ice control rules -- which has been postponed twice before -- is scheduled to follow Tuesday's 4 p.m. meeting.
Dowd can be reached at 715-833-9204, 800-236-7077 or andrew.dowd@ecpc.com .
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