Video interview–Mayor Finch took time out to talk about they upcoming negotiations with the Bridgeport Police Union after announcing the final push for funding for the police memorial that will be located outside the police station on Congress Street.

I asked the mayor if we are still looking at concessions and layoffs and he replied that “they are negotiations and arbitration and expects they will have a great result”. I stated that the budget was passed by the city council with assumptions, were the assumption that they will make concessions, they (the union) already made concessions? The mayor responded “every year we are always asking the union for more concessions” The council added another $400,000 in concessions while the mayor added $1.6 million in concessions. I asked if his stance could be considered anti-union since the union keeps giving concessions they mayor said no because these are agreements that are made and that money is short everywhere.

I asked if he fears highly trained officers looking elsewhere for employment like what happened to Fairfield that just lost an officer to Westport while Fairfield was locked in negotiations for a long period of time. All that training and time the town invested in the officer was lost. The mayor said “we are always concerned about that, we want our officers to stay here, we want to have high morale, I think we have that now and we certainly want to be careful as we negotiate that we don’t have your fortune come true”.