Mayor Gavin Buckley on Monday publicly opposed a proposal by four City Council members to reduce the proposed property tax increase in part by freezing police and fire positions for the next year.
“I will not vote for a budget that eliminates police position that would support a grant to eradicate the gang violence of MS-13 from our city,” Buckley said during the Monday City Council meeting. “I will not vote for budget that freezes vacant police and fire positions, especially when the fire department is already down 17 positions and the police department is already down 27 positions.”
Council members Shaneka Henson, Marc Rodriguez, Rob Savidge and Elly Tierney undertook the effort to further decrease Buckley’s proposed tax rate increase, following the City Council Finance Committee recommendations and working with City Manager Teresa Sutherland. Previous efforts have lowered the proposed increase from 13 cents to 10.5 cents.
The bulk of the cuts relies on freezing unfilled positions in finance, public works, fire and police departments. Sutherland also opposes the freeze in police and fire department hiring.
The four asked city department directors to report what a 1 to 5 percent cut would look like in each of their agencies, Rodriguez said.
The council members based their recommendations off those reports, coming up with roughly 2 to 2.6 cents worth of cuts, to be discussed at the Monday meeting. As of publication, the City Council had not yet begun discussion of the budget.
“A tax increase is really unavoidable at this point if we really want to get the city on firm financial footing,” Savidge said. “But I’m not comfortable having the entire burden of those reforms be placed on the back of the taxpayers.”
The four have proposed cutting expenses in 11 departments, including the mayor’s office, the police department and the fire department.
In the police department, the proposed freezes include a records specialist, a dispatcher, a grant coordinator and a lieutenant. The cut of the lieutenant’s position is based on adequate public facilities calculations using the 2010 census numbers, which would require about 122 officers instead of the funded 124.
Sutherland, in comments on the cuts emailed to aldermen, called this method is “disingenuous,” as the population has grown since 2010.
In the fire department, the proposed freezes include an emergency medical services/firefighter position and an office associate.
Monday night, United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400 representative John Lee spoke against the cuts to the police department.
“You might be taking more officers off the street,” Lee said during public comment. “It might just be the opposite of what you want to do.”
He said morale in the police department is low and hiring and retention is “near impossible” because of more lucrative benefits elsewhere.
Separately, Alderman Fred Paone amended the agenda Monday night to include, on first reader, a resolution freezing all open positions excluding those in the police and fire departments and department directors. The resolution is intended as a cost-saving mechanism, Paone said, and is not tied to the fiscal 2019 budget, though it would affect positions budgeted for fiscal 2019.
The council members also have proposed cuts to the information technology department, which provides technical support to city government. These could be a sticking point, as the four have also proposed cutting human resources contract services that assist the city with its financial management software MUNIS.
Acting IT manager Barb Smith will have to hire a new analyst, which is funded in the 2019 budget, with MUNIS expertise to make the numbers work.
Rodriguez said the group tried to make suggestions that would “strike a balance.”
“If we’re asking taxpayers to pay more, we can’t at the same time … ask them to have less quality and less services,” he said.
Sutherland, in her comments, indicated many of the cuts to police and fire will have a significant impact.
The numbers are still in flux, Savidge said, and will be a part of deliberations during the Monday night meeting. The four sent the proposal to the full council over the weekend.
The aldermen will propose the cuts as amendments to the mayor’s initial budget. Department heads will present to the council what the proposed cuts could mean for services.
The council will also have to vote on Sutherland’s proposed amendments as well as the Finance Committee’s changes. This amounts to more than 100 amendments up for approval.
