Unpaid Furloughs Coming

[Broke Hoss]

Note: story edited for content/space. For full story see: http://www.reporternews.com/news/2010/feb/04/no-headline---web-city_cutbacks/

Cityof Abilene nixes raises; furlough planned

Layoffs remain possibility, officials say

Significantly less than expected sales tax revenues have prompted Abilene to take drastic steps, including eliminating an upcoming employee pay raise and furloughing city workers for three days without pay.
The cutbacks stopped short of laying off some of the city’s 1,200 workers, but city officials haven’t ruled that out — if the financial situation doesn’t improve.

The three furlough days without pay are planned for all city employees, including firefighters and sworn police officers, city officials said.
They are scheduled for three Fridays — March 19, April 23 and July 2.
The city will be staffed on the furlough days as it is on a typical holiday, City Manager Larry Gilley said.

“Obviously scheduling is problematic, but next week we will identify a staffing strategy that will enable us to implement furloughs while not impacting emergency services,” Police Chief Stan Standridge said.
“Our citizens need to know and truly believe that we will not do anything that jeopardizes the safety of this community,” Standridge said. “When they call, we will still come.”

Fire Chief Ken Dozier said he is in the process of scheduling meetings with various groups to determine a plan for implementing the furloughs.
A city news release noted additional evaluation of the planned furloughs will occur “before any final decision is made regarding participation by employees providing such services.”
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Among those not receiving the pay hikes will be four City Council appointees — Gilley, City Secretary Danette Dunlap, City Attorney Dan Santee and Municipal Judge Keith Barton. Police and fire employees, however, will still receive salary increases during the current fiscal year.
Last year, police and fire associations agreed to defer negotiated pay raises. A planned 4 percent pay raise for fire employees is scheduled for April 13, while a scheduled 6 percent raise for police employees is slated for Sept. 14.

“If not for this earlier action (to defer raises), our current budget challenges would be even greater,” said Dozier, the city’s fire chief. “The commitment to honor this agreement speaks volumes for the trust and positive relationship that exists between our city administration and our fire and police departments.”

The total reduction in anticipated sales tax revenue is approximately $1.2 million. Sales tax revenue constitutes roughly 38 percent of the $70.5 million generated in the city’s 2010 fiscal year general fund budget.
Councilmen Anthony Williams, Joe Spano and Stormy Higgins said they believe the city administration is taking appropriate steps. According to Williams, action must be taken when one of the two primary sources of funding is significantly reduced. The remainder mostly comes from property taxes, Williams said.

Others have been dealing with it for a while & some have it worse than us.. I think Dallas is doing 5 days w/o pay. I'm hoping I just trade 1 of my paid vacation days, but I don't have my hopes up. Alot of division within the PD as well. I'm not convenced we'll even get the payraise & don't know that we should. Sure looks bad for us to get a nice 1 when others aren't getting any or losing thier income all together, even if it was due.

How are ya'lls depts/citys dealing with this?

[Reno911]

Are you guys union? How about collective bargaining? City of Reno demanded employee givebacks ie... give back cola increase, uniform allowance and holiday pay. We did give up a uniform allowance and one day of holiday pay last year but nothing else. They have returned to the table and asked for more but we have to negotiate a side letter in the contract if we are going to give anything else up.

Our public safety shortfall or budget overage is due to the hose draggers who rape the city for 10 million in overtime every year. And their overtime is retirement compensible. Fortunately for us, our city has invested too much time and money to consider bankruptcy like they did in Vallejo, Ca.

The long and the short of it is this. If bargaining groups don't "give back" and pay the ransome, layoffs are imminent. So sayeth the city. Fortunately, we are holding around 30 positions open and are not planning on hiring to fill them. That means that there were more sworn cops working the street in 1987 than there are today and the city is 3 times more populated.

We started putting the word out to citizens that if they need the police to call. We will still respond, but instead of the 3 or 4 officers they may get one. It's going to be unsafe in some instances, but we will still be there. I don't think the city will win a popularity award if they lay off any cops. They did however pink slip 14 firefighters and nobody seemed to care.

[Broke Hoss]

We have a local association (union) & are affiliated with a state orginization (CLEAT). We don't exactly have collective bargining, but negotiate thru a new law-meet & confer. Our raises were negotiated there, but they always have the clause saying if the $ aint there we cant get it. We opted to defer our raise because it would've put the city in a bind & likely caused us to bottom out a little earlier.

While we've(both city & PD) spent money I haven't thought we needed to if we're so bad. I still think it's gonna look bad for us to take the raise if they start laying off from other divisions. "Sorry to let ya go Joe, but we gotta give the cops a raise" type of deal.

Our city manager has done a pretty good job. We just graduated an academy of 15 (my son was 1) which actually puts us overstaffed for a short while. But knowing it wouldn't last long he refused to talk about not hiring any of them. He also seemed to really hold onto giving us the raise in the early going. When they were cutting everything else out of the budget, he wouldn't let em touch that.

They've already stopped all outside training/travel, are working on taking back cell phones and take home cars for those that have em (SRO's, SWAT & CID).

I still don't think it's hit as hard here as other places, even within the state. I was just curious what others were going thru.

[Reno911]

That's where we're at. All the cellphones and some of the take home rides went last year. Lots of the old school comforts have gone, overtime, training pay and travel as well. You're right, if there isn't any money what are they going to pay with. Our economy is tourism based and tourism is down. Additionally, we don't have a state tax and because of the property value decrease, the county just reassessed the property value and lowered it reducing the income by a couple of million. Things continue to get worse here. I don't know how long anyone can last. Is your son guaranteed a position? I hope so. We are in a contract extension with zero payraise or cola increase. Anything else that is taken isn't extra, it's right off the top. It really sucks being in a position to have to fight for current pay and benefits at the risk of having someone else getting laid off.

[DD78]

We're getting pinched here too.

The town's finances suck, largely because of incompetent mismangement. We have a five seat town council, a three seat school committee, and a town manager. For the uninitiated the town manager is a position appointed by the town council and they serve at the pleasure of the town council. They can be fired at any time by a 4/5's vote. He's essentially the mayor, though he doesn't have quite as much power as the mayor.

70% of the town's budget every year goes to the school department. However, they keep trying to crush us, the DPW, and the FD. Teacher Unions are very powerful up here and they don't budge for anything. The President of their Union actually told the town council to "go fuck themselves" in an open meeting last year.

Here's the best thing up here. In my state we have two laws that make it impossible to cut from the schools...or just about. We have the Caruolo Act which allows the School Department to sue the town if the schools are not given "adequate funding". "Adequate" is a relative term and has been construed to mean everything from books to health insurance for teachers without co-pay. In 2008 the schools got every penny they asked for when the budget was approved. Towards the end of the year they demanded an additional $3.1 million and the town said no so the School Dept. filed a lawsuit under Caruolo. It was just dismissed but the town still had to pay attorney's to fight a lawsuit for almost a year.

Then you have this stupid baseline budgeting law in RI when it comes to schools. It basically says that you can't give the schools less $ than you gave them last year. Notwithstanding any other circumstance. So if you have 5% fewer students this year, the town cannot cut your budget 5%. It must be at least what they gave you last year. If it's not, they sue.

It's fucking ridiculous. This is all for a school system with a 68% graduation rate mind you. Two of every five freshman never finish.

The DPW is a waste. They put three guys on a trash truck. THREE FUCKING GUYS! We handle 10 man brawls with three guys...sometimes less.

That brings us to the Police situation. We are union, IBPO. We work under a three year collective bargaining agreement, the last of which was signed in 2008, post "financial crisis". The Teachers have a far sweeter deal than the PD and FD. The latter two have essentially the same contract.

We had 60 Officers prior to the last contract for over 30,000 residents. In the last contract we upped our health insurance co-pay, upped our pension contribution by 2%, and held two positions in abeyance. We also deferred a raise of 3% for 18 months. It saved the town alot of money and the town manager said then that it was the best contract he's seen in 30 years as a town manager in several cities across the US.

Within six months he was asking us to open the contract for more cuts. Cuts in pay, cuts in benefits, cuts in pension, all while increasing employee contributions. We said no, as the schools haven't given back a dime. If the teachers paid as much for their identical health insurance as we do the town would have a surplus. Let them bleed a little, you know? It's not our fault that they gave you the finger...literally.

Every year at budget time they talk layoffs but truth be told, even at our current authorized staff we don't have enough guys for what we have. We're a small town (relatively speaking) with big city problems. Gangs, crack, robbery, murder, you name it. Other cities in the state with similar populations and crime statistics have roughly 100 guys. Some more than that.

Our Chief is a frugal guy and he gave back a ton of unused budget money due to his cost cutting measures. We get absolutely no training save for the required firearms and non-lethal weapons recertifications. My patrol car has over 140,000 miles on it and that's pretty standard. We did just get a couple new cars on federal grant money, but the rest of the "fleet" is old as shit. Our police station was built in 1946 for 25 cops. We have 58 now. It's falling apart and we are overcrowded. We have no interview rooms, no sally port, and you have to walk through the cell block to get to the locker room which is the size of a large bedroom for 58 guys.

I often wonder why I'm still here...

[Broke Hoss]

Ouch! We're set up completly different. Elected city council & mayor, who are really just figure heads. Theyappoint the City Manager, who really has the power. School board is completely separate. No income tax, all come from sales tax & property taxes. We're authorized 198 officers with a population of about 115,000. When the last academy graduates PTO in late March we'll be full strength, actually a little over, for the 1st time in years. But that likely won't last long as we have several retirement eligible.

The part I don't understand here is within the city coffers there is the water fund. I aint for sure where all this $ comes from, but suppossedly by law it can only be used by the water dept. There's a couple of million $ in that account that can't be used for/by any other division of the city without an election to change the city charter.

[Reno911]

Damn! I got nothing. Nevada is 50th in the nation for education, so I guess taking away money from the schools ain't gonna matter. We're definitely breeding job security for us though.

Reno hid millions in the sewer fund. When it was discovered, after they had been crying poor for a year, that all got flushed down the crapper.

God help us all.....

[Feet]

We have a CBA also and our contracts have been historically pretty lucrative. Austin is big into the technology scene but we have been slowly declining for years. It seems the schools and solid waste company have shitloads of employees making over 150k a year but they tell us they cannot hire cops. Most of our sity is VERY top heavy with useless brass.
Every few years a liason or some bullshit position gets created and they appoint some douche for the price of 3 cops annual salary.
We have some patrol shortages, thankfully not as bad as other large TX cities,so we have an internal freeze right now. You cannot transfer off of patrol or promote out of it until we get our next academy class self-sufficient.

Our union voted to give up our annual raises for the city and do some other crap which saved the city 5 million for some other promises they gave us in return. New construction is down and businesses are going under which costs the city sales tax. I suggested we enforce our traffic violations in court instead of the liberal judges throwing them out which would at least give us a few hundred thousand each year. Probably 90% of our tickets get dismissed in court due to hippie judges.:handface:

I feel for you northern boys and tourist based cities. We are in the middle of our new academy being built and our new shooting range should be done by the end of the year.:nana:

[DD78]

I suggested we enforce our traffic violations in court instead of the liberal judges throwing them out which would at least give us a few hundred thousand each year. Probably 90% of our tickets get dismissed in court due to hippie judges.:handface:

You know, I'd heard that Austin was a liberal Mecca in Texas full of relocated Yankees, but now I'm sure of it.

Same deal up here.

[CAL]

You know, I'd heard that Austin was a liberal Mecca in Texas full of relocated Yankees, but now I'm sure of it.

Let there be no doubt!

We have some patrol shortages, thankfully not as bad as other large TX cities,so we have an internal freeze right now.
What you need to do is open up your department to reserves. :rock:

[Feet]

I am open for reserves but we are so limited in what we can do, they will probably not let reserves carry guns, just a whistle and OC ol British style.

[Broke Hoss]

CLEAT has been working with the local assn. We'll likely follow thier advice and let the city know we don't believe the furloughs are legal under Civil Service, at least the way they are doing it. But we are understanding of the financial situation & are willing to bite the bullet; if they will correct it through Meet & Confer. Basically, we're using it to firm up some language; protect ourselves in the future, & not look like the bad guys politically.