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Middletown council ratifies AFSCME tentative agreements, adopting pension and job-review provisions
Summary
After public comment from union leaders and detailed staff briefings on pension comparables and implementation, the Middletown Common Council voted to ratify tentative agreements with AFSCME Locals 466 and 1467 covering 07/01/2025–06/30/2029 and to incorporate related pension and job-description provisions.
The Middletown Common Council on Feb. 12 approved a resolution ratifying tentative collective-bargaining agreements with AFSCME Locals 466 and 1467 covering July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2029, including a memorandum of understanding dated Jan. 13, 2026, and related pension and job-description provisions.
Union leaders urged the council to approve the agreements during the public hearing. Brooke Carta, president of AFSCME Local 1467, said the deals “bring fairness and consistency across the workforce” and noted a newly negotiated contribution of 1% of base salary into an OPEB trust to help pay future retiree-health benefits. Vinny Ruffino, president of AFSCME Local 466, described long, “tedious” negotiations and urged the body to endorse the bargaining teams’ result.
Council discussion focused on pension comparables, the practical reach of a pathway to reach up to 80% of salary after decades of service, and how adoption of a Baker Tilly classification study would interact with the city’s labor-management job-review process. Deputy General Counsel Corey Wisniewski told the council the city reviewed roughly a dozen comparable towns and looked at state actuarial reports; she said the data show other municipalities use varying multipliers and eligibility rules, and that only “8.5 percent of the people retiring since 2020 have had 32 years or more” of service — a figure she used to illustrate how few employees would reach the long-service benchmark in practice.
Wisniewski also explained operational details in the tentative agreement: the council may approve a new classification and compensation plan (Baker Tilly’s study), and if it does the city and the union would meet to design a new internal process for reviewing job descriptions; if the council does not approve that plan, the contract provides a different schedule for labor-management reviews in 2027. Staff described implementation steps such as payroll updates and impact bargaining that would be required if the classification plan is later adopted.
Councilman Darnell Ford moved the resolution and Councilwoman Janette Blackwell seconded it. After limited further discussion, the clerk recorded 11 ayes and the chair announced the motion carried.
The resolution authorizes the mayor to sign the agreements and incorporates certain job-description amendments into the city’s classification plan; it also references incorporation of appendix D into the city pension plan "with noted amendments upon approval of this resolution." The council did not vote on adoption of Baker Tilly’s classification study at this meeting; staff emphasized that the study and the contract-adoption decision are separate, with any subsequent pay-scale implementation and impact bargaining to follow.
Next steps: the mayor may sign the agreements authorized by the resolution, and the council will consider any classification-and-compensation plan separately if and when it is formally presented.
