Overture Updates

This is from yesterday . . . update on Thursday, Friday and Saturday meetings . . .

Dear Colleagues,

Here’s a quick update on the last few days’ developments.

The council workgroup met again on Thursday evening. This was primarily intended to be a briefing for the remainder of the council as there was not much new to discuss. The workgroup also met in closed session briefly to discuss its positions on issues.

On Friday, members of the workgroup attended the joint MCAD/ODC/201 State board meeting. Board members discussed the Version 4 proposal at length. The Mayor and workgroup members addressed the boards and answered questions. Steven Wolff made a presentation comparing the costs of the original focus model (not version 1) with version 2 and version 4. There was a lot of good discussion, but this was not a negotiation.

On Saturday, the workgroup, representatives of the boards and their respective attorneys sat down to actually negotiate. There was broad agreement on most of the provisions of version 4, and some of the differences were also worked out. Some differences involved semantics or exact definitions of specific provisions and were relatively easy to resolve.

The primary remaining items of discussion are staff employment offers and starting wages (paragraphs 2(K)(3) and 2(K)(4) of exhibit A), and the exact transition date.

We have a meeting scheduled for Sunday at 12:30, but the weather may make that impossible. I’ll make the call on that in the morning and let you all know. We also have time scheduled on Monday at 5pm.

Thanks as always,

Mark C.