Status of Efforts to become a Union

Back on July 14^th, 2010, when we had our 028 meeting, the result was the election of the ‘028 Collective Bargaining Research Committee’ with Steve Souza as the head of the committee.

One thing they did was to insure that no members came from the DPPA Board, except for Steve Souza who had just joined and did not know most of the history of DPPA. Steve also did not get a chance to vote on the committee.

The committee had to decide what was going on the ballot when we petitioned Labor Relations for a vote on 028 Representation. The committee had many meetings which I don’t know about except for August 11^th, 2010. In that meeting they asked DPPA 28 questions that they thought were important to having DPPA being a Recognized Employee Organization (REO). I went and gave them written answers and found out that they had scheduled October 6^th, 2010 to be done and come before the DPPA Board to tell us what they had found out.

Then the DPPA Board would have two months before the December 1^st – December 20^th, 2010 period in which 028 could go and petition Labor Relations for a vote to take place between December 1^st and April 10^th to determine whether 028 would be unionized. Then if 028 decided that their unit should be a REO, 028 will have to get prepared to negotiate the new contract to be in effect July of 2011.

You will be all contacted by the State Agency that holds the election probably in January 2011.

Letter to all Employees from the CEO

Dear County Employee,

This week, we begin hearings for our Final Budget for FY 2010-11. Despite tremendous challenges, including multiple lawsuits, we have balanced our budget, pending impacts from the state budget.

We are making about $30M in adjustments to our June budget. The adjustments are fully funded and will not automatically add to any future budget debt. The adjustments are a combination of $30M in costs, combined with $30M in additional funds, netting out to zero change to our overall budget. The major sources of funds include carryover, fund balances, reserves from the Teeter fund, Capital Construction funds and Transient Occupancy Tax.

We are expecting some reductions from the state in specific services and are monitoring their activities closely. Any further reductions will most likely be department specific; i.e. if the State cuts “Program A” spending, then we would cut that program accordingly. It is still too soon to predict what the state will do, and when we know what the impacts will be, we will amend the FY 10-11 Budget as necessary.

During the last two years we have made some difficult choices in order to balance our budget and help create long term stability for our organization. Since FY 07/08, we’ve reduced the overall size of our budget by 31%; from $5.08B to $3.5B this year. Since FY 07/08 the size of our work force has been reduced by about 22%; from 14,500 FTE to 11,265 FTE.

Though these choices have not been easy, and we are still grappling with the changes, reducing the size of our organization was absolutely necessary. I thank all of you for persevering during these changes and remaining committed to preserving quality County services.

Steve Szalay

Recommended Position Changes - No 028 Affected

I just received the 'Recommended Position Changes' for the final budget which the Board of Supervisor's will be hearing on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 2 pm. These are new cuts that the County is recommending to make up for the two lawsuits that were settled against the County. There are no 028 layoffs this go around.