{"id":13651,"date":"2012-09-26T17:16:11","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T22:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=13651"},"modified":"2012-09-26T17:16:12","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T22:16:12","slug":"fire-officials-extend-union-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/09\/fire-officials-extend-union-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire Officials Extend <br>Union Contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/fire-officials-extend-union-contracts\/contract\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-13652\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-13652\" title=\"contract\" src=\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/contract-300x157.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"157\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/contract-300x157.gif 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/contract.gif 770w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Right before the end of Tuesday night&#8217;s Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue board meeting adjourned, the commissioners amended the agenda adding an item at the very last minute: a memo of understanding (MOU) with their two local fire unions.<\/p>\n<p>This unusual walk-on item provoked a heated debate that had\u00a0 fire commissioners arguing for more than 45 minutes. Walt Stevens, the Union President of Firefighters &amp; Paramedics Local 1826, noted that by Oct. 1 current employee contracts would revert back to salaries that all personnel were making prior to 2009 when they agreed to $1.66 million in concessions.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The fire district&#8217;s labor attorney had recently declared an impasse during negotiations with the firefighter&#8217;s unions on Sept 10, 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Stevens said after the meeting outside , &#8220;I&#8217;ve never had such difficulty giving money back to a fire district&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The final motion the commissioners made did gave Fire Chief Don Adams the authority to sign an MOU and extend the employees&#8217; current contract while negotiations continue. It passed three to one with Fire Commissioner Dave Adams dissenting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Right before the end of Tuesday night&#8217;s Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue board meeting adjourned, the commissioners amended the agenda adding an item at the very last minute: a&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":13652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}