For years, city employees have enjoyed fulfilling positions
secured by a seemingly steady stream of tax dollars. Not so when
the economy comes to a near standstill and tax dollars are held
hostage by iron-fisted consumers and desperate state
legislators.
For years, city employees have enjoyed fulfilling positions secured by a seemingly steady stream of tax dollars. Not so when the economy comes to a near standstill and tax dollars are held hostage by iron-fisted consumers and desperate state legislators.
Now Morgan Hill’s city employees face the same fear that many private sector workers do. They’re in the midst of a second year of staffing changes, including possible layoffs.
“All employees understand the necessity of living within our means, and that priorities must be established,” City Manager Ed Tewes wrote in an e-mail to the Times. “We also understand that we have a responsibility to the community to do what we do well, even if we are going to do less.”
The $7.5 million in cuts over the past 18 months, caused by declining property and sales tax revenues, resulted in a reduction of 15.75 positions this year over last, after a combination of incentivized retirements, the elimination of vacant positions and the first layoffs since the 1990s. That meant new duties for the city’s remaining workers. And now, faced with a $400,000 shortfall from further property and sales tax drop-off and a $12.5 million state takeaway from Redevelopment Agency funds over the next two years, layoffs, furloughs and pay cuts are on everyone’s mind at City Hall, permeating each of its six major departments.
Likewise, Gilroy has laid off 48 full-time employees since last fall, contributing to more than $11 million savings.
In Morgan Hill, not a single department was untouched by the cuts. The Recreation and Community Services Department lost five positions, four of them full time. The Community Development Department lost seven, six of them full time. Public Works lost a part-time maintenance worker, and Business Assistance and Housing Services’ office assistants saw its hours cut.
That left the remaining city workers with changing, increased job duties, and ongoing uneasiness about their own futures with the city.
But despite the fear of the unknown, most city workers go about their job, taking pride in their work and looking at ways to improve the community.
Still, when cuts come around, the city’s 180 workers seem just as concerned about the effect reduced services will have on the townspeople as they are the effect of inflated job descriptions and pay cuts will have on their own lives.
Recreation coordinator Chiquy Mejia said she made a decisive choice not to worry about cuts in the fall, when she was out sick for more than a week and came back to a tense environment brought on by the midyear cuts.
“I just have to focus on my job,” she said. “I have a business to run.”
Margarita Balagso, senior project coordinator in the city’s Business Assistance and Housing Services department, said Redevelopment Agency cuts could be devastating.
“The RDA has had a tremendous impact in the community, its infrastructure and housing projects. We would like to continue to improve the community to become the community we all see it could be. It would be a tragedy if everything were on hold.”
As for her and her peers, Balagso said it would be premature to worry about being laid off.
Environmental programs coordinator Rebecca Fotu said the same goes for her general fund peers. Things are tense, but there’s nothing they can do but focus on the jobs at hand, she said. Fotu’s position was up for elimination in January. Fotu said she’s taking it one day at a time, waiting to hear details like everyone else.
Municipal services assistant Kat Corrales said the attitude in the Development Services Center is one of silent acceptance as they wait to hear more from Tewes.
Tewes declined to say what would be included in his budget recommendation to the council come Aug. 26, saying they’re still “analyzing the situation.”
Chiquy Mejia, 37
Position: Recreation Coordinator
Years with city: 6
Salary: $66,660
Funded through: Recreation memberships
In a small, cramped office just off the Centennial Recreation Center’s main entrance, flanked by photos documenting her journey from a clown to coordinator of an ambitious recreation department, Mejia is the centerpoint of a thriving, active city division, managing various activities and programs. One of the first full-time recreation employees the city had, Mejia created the successful Cool Kids Day Camp.
Mejia said recreational activities in her native Venezuela, where she worked as a clown in her youth and early adulthood, kept her out of trouble. She said her goal in recreation is to show kids that recreation can be a career for them, too. “This is my dream job,” Mejia said.
Adam Garcia, 33
Position: Groundskeeper
Years with city: 2
Salary: $44,170
Funded through: Property, sales and hotel tax revenues
One community’s litter is another man’s job security. As a groundskeeper, Adam Garcia picks up litter in the city’s 58 acres of parks and landscaped areas. But it’s no walk in the park, he said.
The hectic days are the windy ones, when the trash bags don’t want to cooperate, and the hot ones, when every little “You missed a spot” from well-meaning parkgoers grates on the nerves. And don’t get him started on Mondays after a long weekend.
Garcia takes pride in his work and the immediacy of the reward. “I like to look back and say, ‘OK, that looks nice,'” he said, smiling.
“I come to work every day and I smile, I have a good time with my friends,” he said. “In the private sector, there’s a lot more, ‘Get it done now, don’t worry about how,'” he said. “Here, the safety of the crew is first and foremost.”
Johnny Gonzales, 49
Position: Utility worker, sewer operations
Years with city: Almost 21
Salary: $60,360
Funded through: Sewer enterprise funds (See: your water bill)
Even after 21 years as a utility worker in the city’s sewer operations division of public works, Johnny Gonzales puts his job delicately.
“It’s like peeling an apple,” Gonzales said of the powerful pull hose that tunnels its way down a sewer drain manhole and snakes through a a sewer pipe below Gonzales’ feet. “It takes it off the walls and then pushes it out.”
Each month, Gonzales’ Vactor combination truck pulls pounds of what he politely refers to as debris, sediment or grease from Morgan Hill’s sewer lines.
“It’s consistent. I know what I’m doing daily,” Gonzales said as he pushed buttons, directing the hose on the Vactor truck.
Rebecca Fotu, 28
Position: Environmental coordinator
Salary: $68,460
Years with city: Almost 2
Funded through: 30 percent grant funded this year; Property, sales and hotel tax revenues, and stormwater pollution prevention seed money
Clad in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, Rebecca Fotu tread softly on plush white carpeting through a home in Holiday Lakes, clipboard in hand.
She conducted an energy audit, a free service provided by the city through Fotu, the city’s environmental coordinator. Passionate about educating the public on environmental issues, she spearheaded the city’s popular Carbon Diet Club and was instrumental in adding a green building aspect to the city’s residential development control system. Developers can now earn points in the annual competition for incorporating green building features into their projects. Fotu is grateful for the position.
“I like the idea of serving people in the community. I was a person who grew up with financial aid. I went to college on the Cal Grant. I wanted to give back to the people of California to show them how much I appreciated that, and that I got to do something I really wanted to do with my life.”
Margarita Balagso, 44
Position: Senior project coordinator, Business Assistance and Housing Services
Salary: $99,400
Years with city: 8
Funded through: RDA tax increments rerouted from county, school district and state coffers
Adding signs directing patrons to businesses on Third Street during construction of the Third Street Promenade. Advertising for movie nights. Guiding potential buyers through the down payment assistance program. Being the city’s point-person for grant writing. As the Business Assistance and Housing Service’s senior project coordinator, Margarita Balagso wears many hats.
Like other city workers, Balagso said she likes the variety in her job, and the tight-knit group she works with at the new Development Services Center at Peak and Main avenues.
“Everybody I work with is a great friend, very dedicated and personable,” she said.
Jake Jensen, 28
Position: Engineering aide
Years with city: 2
Salary: $53,400
Funded through: Mostly developers fees and water and sewer enterprise funds.
Most people don’t get too excited over mapping. Not Jake Jensen.
As engineering aide for the city, Jensen is mapping every manhole cover in the city. The reason? When future projects come up, the city will have a detailed map so accurate that very little legwork will need to be done.
In fact, the maps will be so accurate that “you can almost engineer off of them” he said enthusiastically.
The project fulfills the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s requirement that every city have a sewer system master plan and electronic database, Jensen said.
The soft-spoken longtime Morgan Hill resident said he likes having such close contact with the future of the city.
“I like being able to look at a map and knowing what’s going in,” Jensen said.
Kat Corrales, 47
Position: Municipal Services Assistant
Years with city: 5
Salary: $54,408
Funded through: Mostly water and sewer enterprise fund (See: Your water bill), Developers’ fees.
Kat Corrales has the entire city in her hands.
Her desk cluttered with canine knick-knacks and paperwork, Kat Corrales is the go-between for the city’s movers and shakers and the city staff who service them. On a given day, Corrales hands out “plans and specs,” that is, plans and specifications for city projects out to bid, and planholders’ lists to the subcontractors who solicit the contractors who have plans.
Corrales said she liked the fast-paced nature of her job, and the variety. She’s always learning new things, like when the new Wal-Mart is opening (Sept. 15, she says).
