Life Of Jason

I’ve been given e-mails from the city of the various proposals from Council members for budget cuts. Councilmen Deaver, Whayne and Manley made no suggestions. Here is the remaining suggestions cut and paste from each e-mail unedited by me.

Councilwoman Collette:

1.Reduce by one or two hours a week all straight hourly (not salaried)
employees. With an average wage of $17.61 an hour, when you add in
average benefits, that average hourly rate comes to $23.44. Multiply
that times 1,373 hourly employees and you have about $32,000 a week,
times 52 weeks is $1,673,522…2 hours gives you $3,347,044. An hour or
two from each employee might save some essential services and cuts in
half the revenue we need to find.

2.Access to the above funds allows us to have less of an impact on other
areas, in particular, the nonprofits. These are organizations whose
entrepreneurial efforts on behalf of our communtiy need to be emulated,
not penalized. I propose no cut to a nonprofit that exceeds 15% of
their total budget in this upcoming budget year.

3.Lets figure out a way to incentivize our departments to be more
creative We need a ruling from legal on how much departments can do to
increase their own revenues…how creative can they be and how do we
reward really creative ideas by individuals and by departments?

4.After the budget is passed, we hold a public auction with a menu of
programs that need funding because of budget cuts. Let’s offer
businesses the opportunity to sponsor a day at the pool or a dance at
the senior center or an after-school program for instance. Our mission
has to become more than just serving the community; we need to involve
them and invite them to be part of the solution.

5.For next year, let’s take a look into the cost, benefits and downsides
of both an earnings tax and an infrastructure tax as mentioned by
citizens.

We have an opportunity in this budget process to inspire our community,
to find the silver lining in this cloud; that is the focus of my
suggestions for our budget process; How do we inspire and involve a
community that is suspicious of government? How do we remind our
citizens “…that politics in its largest sense can actually be a noble
and useful profession, can actually change a place and its people.”
(Bill McKibben, Hope, Human & Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly On
the Earth)

Mayor Carlson:

1. Modifications to the disability program for Police and Fire under the plan so that
2. Out of title pay – all employees.
3. An Actuarial Study to determine the cost of closing the plan as of a certain date without accruing any further liability; i.e, future benefits would be earned either through LAGERS or a defined contribution plan such as a 401K. The current plan would remain in place to pay current retirees and the benefits earned to the date of closure by current active employees in Police and Fire.
4. Can we assess an additional contribution from Police and Fire employees with the ability to leave it in the plan without a refund provision as exists today?
5. Refinance our debt?
6. What about combining the city and county building development department?
7. Are there some law enforcement functions that could be consolidated; for example, have the county be responsible for all drug enforcement investigation so there is no overlap with what we are doing?
8. Put a mileage reimbursement limit on distance from work for employees who take cars home.
9. If the federal government is going to cut out earmarks, should we cutback on legislative consultants?
10. Anything else that Bob, Collin, or you would suggest.

Councilwoman Rushefsky:

1. The Health Department reduction page indicates that $127,000 reduction would “reduced vital primary health services to the most needy in our community. It then proposes an offset of $73,000 from a food service inspection fee. The “net” I assume relates to cost of the inspection. That would leave $44,000 roughly that would still come from health services to the poor. Am I correct in these assumptions?

2. Please explain the calculation on the 10 hour to 8 hour shifts. Have we accounted for the likely gap in services at shift change time? With the current system there is a two hour shift overlap that keeps officers on the street while the new shift is being briefed. I am also interested in knowing how the two systems compare in use of overtime hours, with and excluding court time which we can’t control.

3. As to the Fire Department, I noticed they suggested three different fees be implemented: a motor vehicle accident service fee (which would be paid by insurance); a fire inspection fee and the EMS fee. Dan Wichmer tells me that the fire inspection fee won’t fly because its considered by the courts to be a fee for routine/traditional fire department service. How about the motor vehicle accident service fee?

4. The Auditor’s report made mentioin of the fact that the city pays vehicle allowances of $420/month to approximately 15 upper management employees. We’re talking about roughly $75,600 per year, more than enough to offset the $44,000 in health care services we’re cutting. In addition, we’re paying $.44 mile to those same people for out of town travel. That seems like a really high reimbursement rate, especially given the generous vehicle allowance. Even at $3.00/gallon for gas that’s high. I’d like to see us cut the reimbursement rate across the board for travel, eliminate any unnecessary travel in all departments and eliminate the vehicle allowance for upper management entirely.

5. I think a mandatory user fee for any services that can bear such a charge would be good for anything that is not a core city function. People can then make their own decisions about how valuable the service is.

Are there any services we provide that might be available for a user fee that we aren’t already charging?

6. I do agree with Doug that we need to look at any city properties/vehicles, etc. that can be sold. It may not be something we can do quickly, but we need to take a look at the possibilities. I realize that we have limitations on what we can do with the Ice Park, but I really think we need to do something more to make it profitable or dispose of it, even if it means going back to the voters.

The other three (Wylie, Burlison, Chiles) are available in a PDF you can click here to download.