LOWER MERION \u2013 Lower Merion Commissioners approved a new four-year contract with its police union.<\/p>\n
The new contract, which runs from 2027 through 2030, includes a 2% pay increase every six months for the life of the contract.<\/p>\n
According to township officials, the FOP voted and ratified the proposed contract on Oct. 28.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been working and meeting with the Fraternal Order of Police for the last five months, so there were multiple meetings,\u201d Ernie McNeely, township manager, said. \u201cOur team has done good work working with the FOP\u2019s bargaining team and have arrived at a new four-year proposed agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the new contract, officers will receive a 2% pay increase each Jan. 1 and July 1 from 2027 through 2030.<\/p>\n
Among other things in the contract, the officers receive 11 paid holidays, which, along with the major holidays such as New Year\u2019s Day, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, also include other holidays not provided by many private employers, such as Martin Luther King Day, Presidents\u2019 Day, Good Friday, Eater Sunday, and Juneteenth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe proposed agreement represents a total base wage cost increase of approximately $545,714 plus an additional $53,000 in benefit costs inflated by the base wage for a total cost increase of $598,714 in 2027,\u201d according to the township staff\u2019s memo to the commissioners. \u201cAfter projected employee benefit savings the net cost is projected at $279,714 in 2027 but both projected cost and savings are dependent on staffing, medical plan usage and the demographics of the department.\u201d<\/p>\n
The township and the union also discussed a few other items that are not included in the contract. Among them, the township agreed to form a committee to develop a policy defining AI usage and guardrails in the department.<\/p>\n
In another provision, the township agrees it will not release the identities of any officer involved in a use-of-force incident if no criminal charges are filed. Although this is already township practice, it should be discussed and potentially incorporated into a policy.<\/p>\n
One final item is that officers may have short, neatly maintained facial hair. The FOP is to work with the superintendent to potentially incorporate the requested provision into policy.<\/p>\n
Todd Sinai, president of the Board of Commissioners, said this feels like a fair contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m thrilled that it\u2019s four years,\u201d Sinai said. \u201cIt gives predictability to our officers; it gives predictability to us to have a four-year contract. And I\u2019m mainly grateful that this is another example of being a very productive relationship between the township and the FOP.\u201d<\/p>\n
The commissioners were also scheduled to discuss a new contract with the township\u2019s workers\u2019 union, but postponed it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER MERION \u2013 Lower Merion Commissioners approved a new four-year contract with its police union. The new contract,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[182,183,185,184,186,200,139,28],"class_list":["post-323077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-local-news","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-montgomery-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}