Budgeting process won’t wait

CITY HALL — With a July 1 deadline looming, the budgeting process will move forward as scheduled with next Tuesday’s public hearing regardless of whether negotiations with the Glendale Police Officers Assn. are complete, City Manager Jim Starbird said Tuesday.

A study session scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to formulate a draft budget was pushed back a week because negotiations with the police union over possible salary concessions are ongoing. City Council members last week said they didn’t want to talk about a final draft budget until after the talks were concluded because concessions on a planned 6% raise could free up the need to make cuts elsewhere.

The city is also negotiating new salary contracts with the Glendale City Employees Assn. and the Glendale Management Assn.

“We had hoped they would be done by today,” Starbird said.

But if no concessions are reached by next Tuesday, the City Council “would need to make a decision in the absence of those.”

The City Council is required to adopt a balanced budget before July 1, the same day police officers are due a 6% pay increase as part of a four-year contract negotiated in 2007. With layoffs a possibility as the city attempts to balance a $9.7-million deficit, the union agreed to meet with the city to discuss possibly forgoing cost-of-living increases, a move the City Council has vocally pushed for.

Starbird emphasized that if no wage concessions are made, the council would have to find other strategies — a 5% cut to the Police Department budget or deeper cuts to other departments — to plug the remaining budget deficit before Tuesday evening’s public hearing.

Mandatory or voluntary unpaid days off, or furloughs, have been discussed as one potential solution. A mandatory furlough of all non-essential city employees would save an estimated $158,000 per day, city officials say.

At a May 20 budget study session, the council endorsed cuts as high as 7.5% to the majority of the city’s departments, but held off on endorsing a full 5% cut to the Police Department, which would mean additional layoffs and the elimination of community-based services to a department already reeling from last year’s unpopular cuts of seven sworn officer positions.

Human Resources Director Matt Doyle has said that the police contracts were negotiated in good faith and that there is no guarantee the union will agree to any concessions.

Last month, Doyle said he was “very thankful” that the union had even agreed to meet.

He declined to comment on the status of the negotiations Monday, and police union President Larry Ballesteros could not be reached.

 MELANIE HICKEN covers City Hall. She may be reached at (818) 637-3235.