In a move that may significantly impact the take-home pay of some future city employees, the City Council voted unanimously Wednesday night to change the way they compute an entitlement that is based on the number of years a municipal worker has worked for the city. A municipal employee’s longevity entitlement, which provides city workers with more than three years of service with a bonus payment on top of their base pay, is generally computed based on the number of years the person has worked for the city. It also can include years worked at another government agency. However, employees who want to get credit for those years at another agency must ensure that the city is aware of this by March 1. If they do not, then years at another agency will not be computed in deciding the amount of their longevity. In addition, anyone hired after March 1 won’t be able to count those other years in government. Longevity payments begin as a 2 percent bonus on top of the base salary after three years of service are completed. The payments rise two percent after every three years of work provided to the city until they reach 13 percent for civilian employees and 16 percent for uniformed police officers and fire fighters. The resolution, which was sponsored by City Councilman Tony Soares, also gives city employees, who may feel that their longevity entitlement may have been miscalculated, time until March 1 to raise the issue with the payroll supervisor at City Hall. Soares said that he raised the issue to try and save the city some money in the future and to encourage current city employees to double check whether they were being paid the proper longevity entitlement. He offered the resolution two weeks after city Director of Administration George Crimmins netted more than $20,000 because Crimmins realized his longevity entitlement had been miscalculated. “Let’s address this issue now,” Soares urged, before the council voted on the measure. “Let’s pay this out to people who deserve it now. We don’t want to have to make big one-time payments to people whose longevity has been miscalculated in the future. It’s unfortunate that we cannot continue to give this out, but this is an issue of fiscal responsibility.” After the meeting, Soares said that he was pleased that attention was being drawn to the fact that a number of rank-and-file city employees may be eligible for the sort of payments that other city officials had already received. “I felt that everyday workers deserve what the big guys already got,” said Soares. “I really feel like I am making good on my campaign promise to stand up for the little guy.” Business Administrator George Crimmins said that the city would send a notice to all city employees along with their paychecks informing them that they had until March 1 to consult the payroll officer if they thought their longevity might have been miscalculated. Joe Grossi, the president of the Hoboken Municipal Employees Association, said that the 200 members that he represents were very interested in determining if their longevity had been properly calculated. “My members have a lot of questions about how these longevity payments work,” said Grossi. “Some people got credit for working for the Community Development Agency (CDA) and the City Employment Training Act (CETA) and others didn’t. We just want to see what formula they are going to use.” Each case will be evaluated individually, said Crimmins after the meeting. “We can’t say that credit will be given for certain agencies and not for others right now,” he said. “Decisions will be made based on the city’s past practices established for determining longevity entitlements.” Currently, more than 25 municipal employees receive an additional longevity benefit from service to a government entity other than Hoboken, Crimmins said. “But some people may have slipped through the cracks,” he said, “since the longevity entitlement used to be calculated based on the anniversary of a person’s hire date, and because of that, it was hard to track.”
City makes changes to computation of employees’ longevity pay
