Mayor: State cap forces focus on 'core services'
Employee-restructuring plan in works to cope with expenses
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer
Brick Township officials may have to resort to a "major restructuring" of the township work force because of the state-imposed budget cap on expenditures, Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis said.

The administration will spend the next several months evaluating core services and moving employees around to where they are most needed, the mayor said.

"We'll be getting back to the core services of the township and looking at the things we will do," Acropolis said, "and things we may not do anymore. I can't say whether that will be with the same number of people, more people or less people."

The administration met with Transport Workers Union officials at least a dozen times and was unable to come up with a contract suitable to both sides. Union officials have balked at having the roughly 225 employees they represent pay anything toward the cost of their health care premiums.

Both Acropolis and Township Administrator Scott M. Pezarras have said the contract, which expired Dec. 31, 2007, will now go to mediation.

"I'm not here to represent any special interests groups, whether it's a union, senior citizens, athletics," Acropolis said. "We have got to represent everyone fairly and not just represent one group. That's what we have to deal with today. There's no animosity here. A 4 percent cap is a 4 percent cap, and there is no way around it."

Acropolis said he would be willing to go to Trenton with members of the public works and police departments to protest the state-imposed cap and insist that more expenditures be allowed outside the cap.

The state has limited all municipalities to a 4 percent cap on the amount to be raised by taxation to support their budgets each year. Health care expenditures fall within the cap. The township's health care premium costs rose $1.3 million this year and the township absorbed the cost, with no increase to employees, Township Administration Scott M. Pezarras has said.

"There is misplaced anger here on the part of the union," Acropolis said. "If you want to hop in the car and ride out to Trenton, I'll go with you. If the unions want to go yell at someone, let them yell at the people they support every year."

Several TWU officials and close to 100 township employees attended the Sept. 23 Township Council meeting to let the administration know they object to any employee contributions toward health care premiums.

Both Chris Mickkelson, president of TWU Local 225, Branch 4, and TWU official Susan Resch said their members were not satisfied with the direction of the contract negotiations and wanted to preserve their health benefits.

"I'm hoping that once they [union officials] have had time to review everything … they will come to agree that if they all give a little, we will all win in the end," council President Ruthanne Scaturro said.

Township officials announced in

September that starting Jan. 1, non-contractual employees would be required to contribute at least 1 percent of their salaries toward their health care premiums.

"The only people right now who will be paying towards health care are the people I'm responsible for — department heads, division heads and unclassified employees," Acropolis said. "We hope everybody else looks at the situation today and says, 'We understand what is going on.' "

Township officials will spend the next several months looking at a "major restructuring plan," he said.

"There is nothing else we can do to survivewithin the 4 percent cap," Acropolis said.

Brick employees currently pay nothing toward the cost of health care premiums with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, the township's health insurance carrier. They pay $5 co-pays for visits to primary-care physicians and specialists. They pay $5 for generic prescriptions and $10 for brand-name drugs. There is no cap on medical expenditures for an employee, Pezarras has said.

Scaturro said the administration would handle any possible work-force restructuring, not council members.