City departments find cuts totaling half a million dollars

City department heads have proposed more than half a million dollars in funding cuts or deferred spending in response to a request by Mayor Tom Rist to tighten the city budget.

Last month, after looking at economic projections for the coming year, Rist decided the city shouldn't wait until disaster struck, and ordered all department heads to identify areas where they could cut spending or defer purchases of new or replacement equipment.

Rist was concerned that with the economy headed south, and expected to continue to falter for at least the next year, the city will be receiving much less revenue than it anticipated when it put together this fiscal year's budget last spring.

As an example, the city expected to receive $770,00 in sales tax revenue sharing from the state, but those numbers now are expected to be at least 10 percent less than anticipated. In addition, the city is now expecting to receive $150,000 less in building permit fees, and other revenue, such as licensing fees, are predicted to decline as well.

When Rist ordered the cuts last month, he set no specific dollar amount to be saved, asking simply that each of the city departments do the best they could to find ways to cut costs, while at the same time continuing to provide essential city services and avoiding any staff layoffs.

"I wasn't trying to be alarmist, but I thought we needed to be doing some forward thinking," Rist said. "And if the citizens out there are having to tighten their belts, it seemed like we ought to be doing the same thing."

Last week the department heads submitted their proposals to the city council, "and I was stunned," Rist said. "They really took this to heart," offering to make cuts totalling $514,442.

In some cases, the departments decided they could avoid hiring seasonal staff. The city parks and recreation department, for example, won't be hiring extra summer help, which means the city parks will get mowed once a week, rather than twice a week.

In other cases, they decided they could defer buying new equipment or replacing old equipment. Existing cars, trucks, mowing machines and other equipment, all of which were scheduled to be replaced as part of regular schedules to keep the city's infrastructure from falling too far behind the curve, have had their replacements delayed.

Rist said that if the economy suddenly turns around, or economic conditions don't turn out to be as bad as projected, that equipment could still be bought, "but we're going to wait to see how things really play out."

The city will no longer pay for meals for employees who attend meetings or seminars, has slashed all out-of-state travel and cut back significantly on in-state travel and training programs, and will not be replacing (in most cases) any staff who leave the city's service.

Thermometers are being turned down, unneeded lights are being turned off, and some programs the city had hoped to launch will be deferred.

As an example, the city had planned on a major renovation of the El Rancho parking lot. Now, it will finish just the minimum work that needs to be done and complete the remaining landscaping and other improvements planned there some time in the future.

"I can't tell you how pleased I was," at the departments' response, Rist said. "It was breathtaking.

"Most departments realized this was needed, and they had a great attitude about doing it."

Some departments were able to find more cuts that others. But that was why Rist didn't impose a specific across-the-board percentage cut on the city departments.

At the same time, Rist said the city recognizes that because of tough economic times, some demands for city services actually will increase.

Crime usually goes up in bad economic times, for example (even though the police department was able to find some significant cuts by deferring some programs it wanted to launch and halting purchases of some new equipment).

In addition, people are expected to make greater use of city parks and the city library services.

But overall, if it wasn't absolutely needed to maintain essential city services, most of the departments decided they could hold off spending the money.

"We're down to the bone, now," Rist said. "If things get worse, we're going to have to take more drastic measures and we could wind up cutting some essential services. But we're trying to stay ahead of the curve and avoid that.

"The joker in the deck is the legislature," Rist said. "Their revenue is going to be down as well," and they could adjust the formula for sales tax sharing revenue, reducing the money sent to cities, or fail to fund programs that are nevertheless mandated by the state for cities to provide.

"We don't know what's going to happen. We probably won't know until at least the end of the second quarter (of 2009)," Rist said. "But I think we've done everything we can to prepare for the worst."