SUNBURY – Sunbury Mayor David Persing is confident that a new contract for the Sunbury Police Department will be in place before the end of the year. One problem they are dealing with is the cost of providing health care.
Persing said, “The health care is a disaster with the federal luxury tax that is going to go into effect next year and the following year. It’s just taken a long time to figure out how we are going to do this, because the last thing I want to do is pay the federal government thousands of dollars just because they don’t like the health care our people want. It’s just a constant battle.”
Persing says their goal is to have something for the police union to look at, hopefully by the end of November, “If we can get it down to one or two things, then that’s perfect because then when you talk about arbitration, if it goes that far, then you are only talking about one or two things, and it’s not a battle forever and ever. I really do think that we just got behind a little bit and we just need to get that on black and white and show them what the options are.”
Persing says he has it in the budget to hire one additional full-time officer for the police department, bringing the number of officers in Sunbury to 12. However, he says there are five people voting for the budget and he doesn’t know if everyone supports adding an officer to the staff. The city’s $4.3-million preliminary budget has 2% raises for Sunbury’s employees, which does not include the police department. (Ali Stevens)