Haghani told the council that layoffs were the only way to reach the $170,000 cut to his department since there were no other vacant positions to slash. The city is already in a hiring freeze.
Cutting 5% from each city department would carve $3.5 million from the projected budget shortfall, according to a city report.
In addition to the initial “hard adjustments” made to balance last year’s budget, including the elimination of 66 positions, Assistant City Manager Bob McFall offered up several other options to the City Council on Tuesday, including continuing the hiring freeze, reducing overhead costs and consolidating operations and services.
The council could also call for an additional 1% across-the-board reduction, or forced unpaid furloughs or reduced hours.
“To reflect the community vision is an ongoing challenge for us,” McFall said.
After each of the 16 city departments makes their presentation over the course of the next two weeks, the City Council is expected to wade through how to impose anticipated reductions of between 5% and 7.5%.
Councilwoman Laura Friedman urged the community to get involved in the process.
“As we go forward, public participation will be very important in this process,” she said.
At the rate the city is headed, the unavoidable outcome is crashing toward doing more with less.
Already, Haghani said, his staff has been volunteering on the weekends without pay in order to help push through three historic district designations. At least three operations will be consolidated this year, McFall said. Fleet management use has been consolidated from four to one, saving about $1 million.
And reducing the take-home vehicle fleet from 105 to 57 is saving the city an additional $1 million, he added.
