By Mark Reynolds

Marlborough approves PBA contract

Posted 1/22/20

After working for more than a year under the terms of an expired Collective Bargaining Agreement [CBA], the Town of Marlborough and the Marlborough Police Benevolent Association [PBA] reached an …

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By Mark Reynolds

Marlborough approves PBA contract

Posted

After working for more than a year under the terms of an expired Collective Bargaining Agreement [CBA], the Town of Marlborough and the Marlborough Police Benevolent Association [PBA] reached an agreement last week. The Town Board ratified two, 5 year agreements for their 8 full and 19 part-time officers. The new contracts run from January 1, 2019 through December 31, 2023.

Supervisor Al Lanzetta said there was some “give and take” during the negotiations that took a year to complete.

“It’s a good five year contract that we were fighting for,” he said, adding, “We went through mediation and that didn’t work; there were a lot of sticking points but it was in good faith and we came up with something that we both could live with. The outcome was a good outcome for everybody concerned. It turned out alright.”

Lanzetta said the exact amount of the salary increase for the 5th year had not been negotiated, “so we had to come to some understanding about that, but eventually it all worked out. The end result was that the town was happy and the Police Department was happy.”

Sgt. Justin Pascale has served as President of the Marlborough PBA for the past 14 years. He said the key parts of the agreements deal with wages and increases and medical benefits.

Pascale said he started negotiations “early on to try to get a resolution prior to the expiration [12/31/18] but that didn’t happen. It’s time consuming cause you have to get our side and their side to sit down and everybody is working.”

Pascale said, “we put items we are interested in on the table and the town puts things on the table they’re interested in.” He said over the next five years the increase “bounces back and forth” between 2.25% and 2.5%, “and there are increases in our shift differentials; when you work 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. it is a differential and when you work overnight.”

Pascale said ultimately, “it worked for both sides; everybody got a little bit of what they wanted. Like they say, if both sides walk away a little bit unhappy everybody wins; everybody made out OK.”

Pascale, who grew up in Marlborough, said this year marks 20 years that he has served the department. He started out as a dispatcher in 1998 at age 19 and went to the Police Academy in 2001.

Pascale said sometimes people tell him to move away to expand his horizons but he stays because of family and he finds his job very rewarding.

“My grandmother, Helen Pascale, but everybody called her Daisy, was one of the first female police officers in the state of New York and she started here in 1963. She passed away in 1993 when she was 73. She was an example to me and my father was a Judge, so Law and Order was always in my blood.”

Pascale likes representing his fellow officers as their PBA President.
‘I’m a people person so I like to sit down and try to bring the two sides together; it makes things a lot smoother,” he said.

The annual budget for the Police Department is $1.14 million. Copies of the CBA agreements can be obtained at the Supervisor’s office during business hours.