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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
City Workers May Face Furloughs
By Kiera Hay
Journal Staff Writer
Furloughs may soon be imminent for Santa Fe municipal workers.
A plan presented to the city's Finance Committee on Monday calls for alleviating a potential budget shortfall with furloughs for all non-essential city employees.
The furloughs would likely involve shutting down some city operations entirely on certain days.
Plans are in the works despite the city getting some relatively good news about gross receipts tax revenues this month. Members of the city's Finance Committee learned Monday that July tax receipts, which reflect May business activity, actually came in ahead of estimates.
The city collected about $7.4 million for July, a 9.6 percent drop from the same time a year ago but roughly 9.7 percent ahead of the $6.7 million that had been predicted by city staff.
“We had sort of one of those 'less bad is the new good,' ” city finance director David Millican said.
A slashed budget approved by the City Council in June was based on predictions that the first half of the 2009-10 fiscal year would see a gross receipts tax revenue reductions of 9 percent, while the latter part of the year would experience an upswing of 1 percent.
The idea for furloughs came out of meetings held by a special “restructuring” committee convened last month to work on budget reduction measures after officials discovered Santa Fe's June GRT had unexpectedly dropped by 15 percent compared to the same month in 2008.
Despite July's “good” news, the restructuring committee will continue to work on the furlough plan, which will be presented to the Finance Committee in mid-August.
The furloughs would be in addition to reduced hours already agreed upon by members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Whether the City Council actually implements the proposal, and to what extent, likely hinges on the city's August GRT revenue check.
“If we get a very serious drop in August, we will need to move quickly to have some effect on the rate of spending,” Millican noted.
In other city financial news, officials said they're still negotiating with Santa Fe's police union on a scheduled three percent raise.
Although a 3 percent raise is part of the current police contract, the City Council failed to include funding when it approved a budget in June.
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