Senior citizens, teenagers, crime victims, developers, parks
users, city employees and just about everyone else in Morgan Hill
will feel the impact of the ongoing financial crisis if the city
council adopts a staff-recommended budget for the fiscal year that
starts July 1.
Senior citizens, teenagers, crime victims, developers, parks users, city employees and just about everyone else in Morgan Hill will feel the impact of the ongoing financial crisis if the city council adopts a staff-recommended budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
The city manager’s proposed budget was released Friday. The council will consider possible changes to the $141.2 million proposal at upcoming workshops and public hearings over the next several weeks, with final approval scheduled for June 16.
The recommended budget suggests the elimination of about 16 full-time positions whose salaries are funded by the tentative $25.1 general fund. Six of those positions are currently vacant. But on Wednesday 10 city employees were served with “pink slips,” notifying them that their jobs will be gone or their hours will be scaled back as of July 1.
Those personnel cuts make up the bulk of the $2.3 million in cuts in the general fund, according to Assistant to the City Manager Brian Stott. Combined with last year’s elimination of about 12 city positions, the proposed cuts for fiscal year 2010-2011 make up about a 16 percent reduction in the city’s workforce in two years.
“These budget cuts will adversely impact services to the community,” City Manager Ed Tewes said. “We are not suggesting that we do ‘more with less.’ We are at the point where we must acknowledge we will provide ‘less with less,’ but what remains should be at high levels of professionalism and service. We just can no longer do all that we did before.”
About 61 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on employees’ salaries and benefits. As city Budget Manager Jimmy Forbis noted Friday, “Now we’re to the point we don’t have the money to pay the personnel costs we have,” Forbis said.
The recommended budget, presuming the council approves two union proposals Wednesday, suggests the elimination of one police officer position which was vacated earlier this year when a patrol officer retired.
It also recommends laying off the city’s animal control officer, a recreation coordinator, an office assistant and a senior project manager.
Full-time positions that would be reduced to part-time include a public works inspector, the community development director, environmental services coordinator, the manager and coordinator for the business and housing services division, and the program administrator.
And although five other positions suggested for elimination are vacant, they were occupied less than a year ago, according to Forbis. That means the services they provided are newly lost. Those include two municipal services assistants, whose loss affects front-office services in city offices; a multi-services officer, who would have transported inmates to county jail; half a groundskeeper position; half a maintenance worker; half a public safety dispatcher; and 60 percent of the community development director, a position which is currently occupied on an interim basis.
The recommended budget achieves additional savings by delaying the purchase of capital equipment such as vehicles, Tewes added, and by using about $600,000 in reserve funds.
Unions propose jobs savings
At least one positive change to the proposed budget is almost certain. Two of three full-time sworn police officers’ positions slated for elimination will be saved if the council makes a deal with the union that represents them.
In a proposal from the Police Officers Association, the union will give up a 3 percent raise for its 33 members, for each of the next three years, as well as seniority-based raises that are currently guaranteed in the POA’s contract with the city.
In return, the council will promise not to lay off any officers or require furloughs for the term of the contract.
The union’s concession would save about $2.1 million over the next five years, while laying off two officers would save about $1.7 million in the same time, Stott explained.
Another proposal on the table Wednesday is from the Community Services Officers Association, which represents the city’s animal control officer, multi-service officers, community services officers, dispatch employees and other public safety support staff.
In that agreement, union members will give up pay raises currently scheduled for the next two years, as well as seniority-based raises.
In return, the council will make a “good faith effort” to include CSOA members in any potential proposal to contract police services to an outside agency during the five-year term of the contract, Stott said.
That contract amendment offers the city savings of about $330,000 over the same time period. While the proposal does not contain a no-layoff clause as the POA’s does, and the savings is not enough to fully fund the $100,000-per-year animal control officer, it gives the council more room to find a way to preserve the services.
In addition, management level employees have agreed not to take a raise for the second year in a row.
Schools to see biggest loss of public safety
Still, residents will notice a loss of police services with the remaining cuts. The most significant will be in the schools, according to Chief Bruce Cumming.
In recent years the department has been able to dedicate three school resources officers to campuses in the Morgan Hill Unified School District. With the cuts proposed for next year, one remaining SRO will serve the schools on an as-needed basis and handle juvenile crime follow-up investigations, Cumming said.
“The desirability of having police officers assigned in the schools is priceless, because they’re there every day, and they get to know the kids and the administration better,” Cumming said. “It’s a hand-in-glove type of operation.”
The officers that used to serve the schools will be re-assigned to the streets to make up for the loss of a patrol officer who retired earlier this year, and whose position will not be filled in the recommended budget.
Other likely cuts in the police department include the partial elimination of a 911 operator, and the loss of a crime scene investigator who currently works on an as-needed basis.
Seniors, teens affected by recreation cuts
In the Recreation and Community Services Department, services offered at the senior center will be cut by about half. The senior center, which operates out of the Centennial Recreation Center, offers a variety of programs that allow senior citizens to socialize with each other and stay healthy. The good news, according to department director Steve Rymer, is the senior nutrition program will be saved. Funded by the county and the YMCA, the program will still serve lunch to Morgan Hill senior citizens five days a week.
Furthermore, the senior center’s hours will be reduced from seven to five hours per day.
In addition, the CRC’s teen center will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays and tax dollars will no longer support the Youth Action Council’s fashion show and “roofless concert.”
“We’re able to retain all our key service areas,” Rymer said.
Environment to suffer in public works
Reduction of staff in the city’s public works department will be most noticeable in the elimination or cutbacks of the city’s environmental services, according to public works director Jim Ashcraft.
The carbon diet club, environmental indicator reporting, home energy audits, implementation of the sustainable building ordinance and education for residents on carbon footprint calculations will not be funded under the recommended budget.
“We’ve had to cut almost everything in the environmental programs that doesn’t have some revenue attached to it,” Ashcraft said.
Residents will also notice longer grass and more weeds in city parks and ball fields with the reduced budget, Ashcraft said.
Furthermore, developers will see a reduction of front-office assistance in the department’s engineering division – specifically at the front counter of the city’s development services center, and in the availability of inspection services.
