The Tyrone Borough Police officers, represented by the District 98 of the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, met Monday, July 15 with borough officials to discuss the terms of their next contract. The officers, who joined the machinists union last year, presented their proposal and another meeting has been set up for August as the municipality and officers begin the task of hammering out a deal by December 31, when the current contract expires.
“We’ll be taking their proposal to council in executive session before the August public meeting,” Borough Manager Al Drayovitch said this morning. “Beyond that, I can’t comment on the negotiations.” District 98 Business Manager Pete Mathieu also declined to comment on the talks.
The police declined a request from the borough to forego the four percent wage increase that was guaranteed by their current contract for this year. There is little information available about the police proposal, though a source close to the borough has indicated that the hiring of more full-time officers is among the issues presented to the borough. At this time, the Tyrone Police Department has only one full-time police officer active, besides Chief Joe Beachem, who is not included in the contract.
In other borough news, the Tyrone Water Authority met recently and several Department of Environmental Protection officials were on hand to discuss the source water assessments. According to the 1996 amendments to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, community water supplies are periodically reviewed at the source for possible contamination. A draft copy of the final report has been given to the borough for review and Drayovitch noted the final copy will be available soon.
“There were some errors in the draft and we have 30 days to note any corrections that need to be made,” he said. “The errors related primarily to out-dated information DEP used when writing the report — such as the fact we have two reservoirs in use.”
Tyrone has two reservoirs, but only one is in use. It has a capacity of approximately 90 million gallons.
