?Cut your budget or we will?: Nunley issues warning about city finances
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?Based on my calculations,? said Nunley, ?I expect that where we are right now is, at a minimum, three times what we are willing to leave in this budget. There-fore, it has to be cut again.?
Along with cutting the estimated budgets of each department, elected officials are once again looking at the cost-of-living increases received by city employees
Every year, all city employees get a 3 percent cost-of-living raise and a step raise. The step raise is an effort made by the city to get the pay of city employees up to more competitive wages to stop the turnover rate caused by employees leaving to find better pay and more benefits in other cities.
According to data received from the city, removing the cost-of-living raise would reduce the strained budget by almost $200,000.
?I know no one here wants to place this on the backs of employees,? said Nunley, ?but if you put these raises in there, it raises everything else. It appears to me that this is one place that we can take a substantial bite.?
Removing this raise would still leave the step increase intact for this year and in November city employees will still receive the cost-of-living check voted on in 2002.
Also discussed was health insurance for city employees. One option would be to raise the co-pays or limit acceptance regarding city employee spouses to those who cannot obtain coverage elsewhere.
?I don?t want any employee we?ve got to not be able to have insurance for them or their children,? said Nunley.
Before any decision is made, the committees will have one more chance to reduce their departmental budgets. If the budget cuts are not made by the committees, Nunley warns the Finance Committee will ?take it page by page and hack stuff out of the budgets.?
?If we can pull a few more thousand dollars out of this budget and operate successfully, that?s an obligation we must try to meet,? said Nunley.
With the clock ticking, all the committees have agreed to meet July 31 and stay until midnight if necessary. The meetings will begin at 4:30 p.m. with Building and Grounds.
The remaining meetings are tentatively set for 5:30 p.m. Water and Sewer, 6 p.m. Parks and Recreation, 6:30 p.m. Streets and Sanitation and 7 p.m. Safety.
The Finance Committee will meet again to review the budgets Aug. 4 at 4:30 p.m.