By: centraljersey.com
LAMBERTVILLE – A police officer, who has served Lambertville for five years, is starting the New Year without a job.
The city laid off Officer Vincent Albani after negotiations over contracted raises with the police officers’ union failed, the city has announced.
The loss reduces Lambertville’s full-time force from 10 to nine.
Public safety will not be compromised, with overtime helping to fill the gap, city labor attorney, John Lanza, said.
The layoff was based on seniority. Because Officer Albani was the last hired, he was the officer who was let go.
Factoring in salary, benefits, overtime and other factors, the layoff is estimated to save the city about $80,000, according to Mr. Lanza. Even with other officers’ overtime factored in, the city still is expected to see a savings, he said.
According to Mr. Lanza, the city offered its officers the incentive of a new prescription drug plan in exchange for eliminating contracted 4-percent raises for 2011 and 2012 or putting them on hold, but the offer was not accepted.
Officers received a 3.5-percent raise in 2010.
The city currently does not offer its officers a prescription drug plan, according to Mr. Lanza.
The offer "was rejected by the union members and the union made no counter offer," Mr. Lanza said.
The city had hoped a future economic recovery would help pay for the salary increases later if raises were frozen for now, "but the union refused," the labor attorney said.
The Hunterdon County PBA Local 188 "demanded to see our budget for 2011," Mr. Lanza said, noting the demand was impossible to fulfill because the budget for the year has not been written yet. "We couldn’t give it to them and they cut off negotiations," he said. "We did everything we could to avoid this situationM, but were not able to do that."
PBA Local 188 did not submit a comment on the failed negotiations and layoff via a written statement by Monday morning, as a spokesman had said it would.
A spokeswoman at the Lambertville police headquarters last week directed all calls to Mr. Lanza.
The layoff stems from a conflict between the state’s new 2-percent cap on municipalities’ ability to raise taxes and the police officers’ contracted 4-percent raises. The salary increase eats up most of the allowable 2-percent increase under the state’s new limit and "would leave only $30,000 for everything else in the city," Mr. Lanza said.
The layoff of Officer Albani "was the last thing the mayor and council wanted to do," Mr. Lanza said. "They simply had no alternative."

