Proposed City Budget Could Add 40 Jobs

For the first time in years, the size of City Hall’s workforce could inch upward ever so slightly.

The $478 million budget proposal announced by Mayor Richard Berry on Friday would authorize funding for about 40 new jobs.

That includes 15 firefighters for a station under construction near 57th and West Central; 10 accounting and information technology jobs; two animal handlers; and other additions. The budget wouldn’t commit the city to actually filling the positions, but it would make doing so more likely because the funding would be available.

The city of Albuquerque has made the opposite move in recent years, cutting vacant jobs from the books in each of the past five years. That shrunk the number of employees authorized in the budget about 8 percent, from roughly 6,300 employees in fiscal 2008 to 5,800 this year.

But even with 40 additions next year, the number of employees would remain well below 2008 levels.

Significant pay raises, meanwhile, appear unlikely. The mayor’s budget for next year would set aside enough funding to provide a 1 percent raise to employees making less than $50,000 a year, subject to union negotiations.

Berry said city leaders have made progress reducing the size of government. The move to add some jobs next year, he said, “speaks volumes” about Albuquerque’s stronger financial position.

City Councilor Rey Garduño said he’d like to see the city do more. Bus drivers and other employees deserve better pay, he said.

He took aim at the mayor’s continued efforts to shift money away from basic operating expenses and into capital projects.

The city should “stop raiding the operating budget,” Garduño said Friday in an interview.

Diego Arencón, president of the firefighters’ union, echoed that concern.

“We do not have the operational resources to maintain new capital projects,” he said. “Our fiscal priorities should focus on reinvesting and sustaining essential public safety services, not boutique projects.”

Berry’s budget proposal includes about $3 million that would be intended as cash financing for special capital projects. Possibilities include a bicycle loop, recreational areas in the bosque or acquiring land needed for the rebuild of the Paseo del Norte interchange.

Berry said the actual projects would be selected through a public process.

He doesn’t share Garduño’s assessment of the operating budget. The opposite is actually true, he said, as it’s the capital fund that’s been “raided” to prop up the operating budget.

In the 10 years before Berry took office, the city repeatedly took property-tax revenue that previously had supported capital projects and switched it over to fund basic operating expenses. The switch amounts to $48 million a year – far more than the administration is proposing to put back.

“We need to shift some of those dollars back into our built environment,” Berry said Friday.

Dan Lewis, chairman of the City Council’s budget committee, said the mayor’s budget is a “good, balanced proposal” and the council will consider it carefully.
— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal