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Middletown council reviews tentative labor deals that raise pension maximum to 80% for very long service
Summary
At a Feb. 4 workshop the Middletown Common Council reviewed tentative agreements with AFSCME Locals 466 and 1467 that raise the pension maximum from 70% to 80% for employees who reach roughly 36 years of service, include a Medicare Advantage retiree plan and an MOU clarifying on-call stipends; councilors requested actuarial and comparable-contract detail before a Feb. 12 ratification vote.
Middletown’s Common Council on Feb. 4 held a special workshop to review two tentative agreements with AFSCME Locals 466 (city workers) and 1467 (Board of Education employees) that would change pension and benefits terms for frontline employees and set a ratification vote for Feb. 12.
Corey Wisniewski, deputy general counsel, told the council the TAs cover a broad set of blue-collar and frontline positions — including 911 operators, water and sewer personnel, sanitation employees, custodial staff, building officials and others — and represent months of bargaining that the city’s team views as responsible and sustainable. He said the agreements were provided to council members with redlines and a financial impact statement prepared by the finance director.
The most contested change is a pension-maximum adjustment. Under existing contracts the pension maximum for affected employees is 70%; the TA would raise that maximum to 80% but, as staff explained, the higher level would require roughly 36 years of service to attain under the unit’s multiplier (2.25). Wisniewski said only four current unit members would immediately be eligible for the 80% maximum. The city’s financial impact statement lists an actuarial estimate of about $248,000 in additional pension cost in year one attributable to the change (about $992,000 across four years), and a total TA-area cost figure presented in the packet of roughly $2,218,000.
Council members repeatedly pressed staff for context. “How many members do we have in 466?” Councilman Lofredo asked; Wisniewski answered that Local 466 has 192 active members. Lofredo and others pressed for comparable-contract examples and for the actuarial work underlying the cost numbers. Wisniewski said he had provided contracts and data from several Connecticut municipalities and that the pension numbers were calculated by the city’s actuary using census data and updated mortality tables.
Councilors also questioned how the TA interacts with retiree health benefits and other offsets. Wisniewski said the TA moves eligible retirees onto a group Medicare Advantage plan at age 65; materials supplied to councilors referenced a projected per-member savings figure in the packet and an OPEB savings line of about $345,007.44. City staff also confirmed that employees in the units contribute 6% of earnings to the pension plan each pay period and noted that overtime is included in the highest-three-year salary used to compute pension benefits.
On Social Security, Wisniewski said the city does not pay Social Security for the majority of unit employees; a small subset (he said 10 people) elected Social Security options at hire and those individuals cannot receive both Social Security and the city pension benefit for the same service period.
The TA includes non-pension items the council reviewed: two job descriptions (public health sanitarian enforcement officer and housing code enforcement officer) with clarified language about after-hours expectations, and an addendum (MOU) that standardizes on-call stipends in the health department. Under that addendum the city and union clarified a $300 weekly on-call stipend for certain health-department roles (with a one-hour unpaid offset for the first call in a week), a $50 weekly “on deck” payment when sanitarians cover housing-code calls, permission for swaps, and a restriction on take-home vehicles to employees only while they are on call beginning July 1, 2026. Wisniewski said those MOU clarifications were intended to remove ambiguity that had caused concern among unit members.
Finance director materials and actuarial assumptions were discussed in detail. Carl Urlacher’s actuarial numbers, staff said, use the city’s pension census and updated mortality assumptions; Nicole Carr, payroll and pension supervisor, explained standard survivor-benefit options (the default 50% survivor option and optional reduced-member/higher-spouse options).
Councilors asked for additional documentation before the Feb. 12 vote: multiple members requested the full actuarial calculations and the comparable-contract extracts Wisniewski cited. The workshop did not include any formal ratification vote on the agreements; the council did take a procedural motion to adjourn, moved by Councilwoman Jeanette Blackwell and seconded by a councilwoman identified in the record, which passed.
