December 19, 2016
HORNELL, NY – Hornell Mayor Shawn Hogan has come up with a way to deal with the cost of insurance premiums due to the Police unions’ ability to retire after only 20 years. “Nine times out of ten police officers do not retire after the 20 year period,” said Hogan, “But we are still obligated to pay that high premium which allows for the fact.” The Mayor continued, “We could have offered a 25 year retirement plan, but the retirement insurance premiums would still reflect a 20 year system. You cannot change that, so our goal was to give officers a little more incentive to get out after 20 years, which will allow us to bring in new officers at a reduced salary thus saving money.”
According to Hogan, starting salaries will remain the same at $43,000 a year, but the wage scale increments and retirement incentives have been slightly adjusted for a number of officers who actually do plan on retiring after 20 years.
The current police union contract runs from April 1st, 2016 to March 31st, 2020.
In other news the Common Council approved a number of appointments for the city. Carla Johnson and Mary McDaniels were reappointed to the Library Board of Directors, and Sam Nasca was reappointed to the city of Hornell’s Industrial Development Agency. Also DPW head Mitch Cornish was appointed to a new position of Labor Standards Officer. According to Hogan this is just basically another duty for Mitch with no salary increases.
