The city of Ocean Shores has reached agreement on a new three-year contract with its Public Works and clerical workers.

Among the changes, the new contract allows the city to hire four seasonal employees this summer, said Mayor Crystal Dingler, who helped negotiate the agreements for the city.

The city currently continues to negotiate new contracts for its public safety employees.

The new contract affects about seven clerical workers and 25 in Public Works.

Having the ability to hire summertime help was an important part of the contract to the city.

“For a long time, we would have people coming back in the summer off of a lay-off, but that kind of dried up. And we had to pay them what they were making when they left,” Dingler said.

“One of the things we promised people is that we are going to do more neighborhood work, like cutting the grass on the side of the roads,” the mayor noted.

The city budget for 2017 also includes a new side-mounted mower for the grass cutting work.

“That’s really going to allow us to provide more service to people,” Dingler said.

Both agreements with Public Works and clerical staff are retroactive to July 2016, when the previous contracts expired.

Among the items changed in the new contracts, Dingler highlighted the following:

• Seasonal employee language: “This has kept us down to none or one a year because the costs were beyond our ability to pay, yet summer is an extremely busy time of the year for us. We appreciate the union members give on this point and will have four seasonal employees this summer, one in water, two for streets and one in litter control.”

• Changes in wording for “meets minimum requirements” standard, to allow the city to better screen employees applying to transfer to technical positions.

• Lowers the range within which the city will pay cost of living (COLA) raises from 2-4% increases based on August of the prior year Seattle-Bremerton COLA to first year: 1.5-3.5%; 2nd year: 1.75-3.5%; third year: 2-3.5%.​

• Increases the monthly amount that the employee will contribute each year toward their benefits from $80/mo to $90 in 2017; $100 in 2018,;and $110 in 2019.

• Increases severance for Public Works employees to same as clerical at 15 years. Encourages employees to stay longer.

• Adds a mediation step to the grievance procedure. “We asked for this as an interim step before giving the PERC the right to do binding arbitration.”

• Removes the merit step, which was forever, and replaces with a merit raise for one year at a time.

The contracts also are for three years, rather than two years, which gives the city more breathing room for future negotiations.

“I appreciate the willingness of the City Council and the union to let us do that,” Dingler said.

Dingler and her negotiating team of City Clerk Rachel Carl and Finance Director Angela Folkers are currently in negotiations on the Fire Department contract and begin this month on the Police contract.

“We’ve been in negotiations with the fire fighters now for about three months,” Dingler said.

She noted that in previous years, the Fire Department contract often was the first one negotiated, which usually set up similar negotiations with other unions.

“I don’t know if they would want to follow the lead of the Public Works and clerical (contracts) or not,” she added.