I'm not sure whether you would call my day "fun."
I spent much of it splitting time between the Portland City Council's budget retreat in City Hall and the Portland Police Association contract negotiations in the Portland Building. It was, at the least, educational.
In the budget meeting, we learned that Portland has $9.7 million in leftover revenue from the 2009-2010 fiscal year, and that previous forecasts for the general fund—source of much of the city's spending—are holding up amid a still-dour economy. One likely beneficiary of that extra cash: The police and fire bureaus, which would be allowed to hire new workers to offset an expected wave of retirements this summer.
In the union talks, we learned that the city wants to move forward as quickly as possible on negotiations, because—ding-ding-ding!—labor costs from a contract that officials wanted negotiated months ago linger as one of the great question marks on the city's ledger for the next two years.
Union and city negotiators tried to chip away at some of the less controversial items today, as in nothing sticky like discipline, oversight, or compensation. But after more than five hours of talks, there was agreement only on some housekeeping measures.
One seemingly innocuous change sought by the union, like changing "bureau" to "city" in the contract, was anything but. The city's team had to say no, so far, because of how that might affect plans to arm police-like workers in other bureaus (Hi, Randy Leonard!)
What else did we learn today? Keep reading.