Get your hands off that calculator

By

The Portland Tribune, Mar 28, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

While the formal Portland Public Schools budget hearings have wrapped up, citizens continue to weigh in on their priorities through an online survey and budget calculator on the district’s Web site, www.pps.k12.or.us.

The Web feature has been extremely popular, district officials say Ñ but outgoing teachers union President Ann Nice thinks the part that focuses on employee compensation is a cheap shot, intended to point a finger at the union before contract negotiations slated for this summer have even started.

The survey asks people to click different boxes if they want to impose wage freezes, increase teachers’ health insurance payments or eliminate health benefits for early retirees. It states that such proposals are all subject to collective bargaining.

“The district should conduct their collective bargaining at the bargaining table and not through an exercise in a so-called budget calculator,” said Nice.

Gard gets guard up

Further proof that what goes around comes around: Sources Say caught up with spinmeister Brian Gard last week in the lobby of the Governor Hotel, where we’d just watched the City Club debate for council position No. 2.

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