Budget crunch costs city jobs
By Jesse Phelps

Two positions - in effect, what remains of an entire department - are at stake this week when the City Council convenes to vote on proposed cuts to the city budget for the coming year. The city has been undergoing a reorganization, separate from the budgetary crisis looming, thanks to a loss of revenues from transient occupancy taxes under the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa's remodel and the problems at the state level.

In his proposal to try to balance the city budget in the face of the dramatic losses in revenue, City Manager Dan Singer has slated the entire staff of the General Services Administration for the chopping block. But he said the decision to eliminate the department isn't necessarily due to the budget problems.

"The reorganization would be happening anyway if it wasn't for the budget crunch," he said. "Whether that would include layoffs, I couldn't say certainly. It was my hope to keep as many employees as we could. When it became clear we could do business more efficiently, it became my responsibility to examine that."

Though nothing was finalized as of press time - the regularly scheduled city council meeting last night provided a forum to debate all proposed cuts and final decisions will come through after the start of the fiscal year July 1 -city employees Linda Fisher-Helton and Marsha Hall have already been notified of the potential loss of their positions.
"I'm recommending that their positions be eliminated at the end of July," said Singer. General Services Director Carol Fox already left the city on May 1.

Singer said all recommendations for reorganization will go before the council on July 8. "No official decisions will be made until that time," he said. "(Last night's meeting) was just an indication of whether they're satisfied with the budget the way its recommended, and then July 8 is when an actual decision would be made."

Singer estimated the net cost to the city of the three salaries and associated benefits at about $200,000 and said that most of the work assigned to the General Services Administration will be parceled out to contracted workers rather than city employees. "We're probably spending about $70,000 to $80,000 to do that same work (under the new system)," said Singer. That creates "a net saving to the city of about $120,000."

The departmental budget for general services was about $160,000 this year. Singer said, "Now it'll be zero but some of those costs will be reallocated."

The General Services Administration was a relatively new department, created in the late 1990s to oversee the growing trolley service and other programs like grant writing and public relations. Anything, said Singer, "that didn't naturally fall into existing departmental responsibilities. At this point, we're looking to dissolve that department by reassigning those responsibilities to existing departments (and contractors)," he said.

"It would be fair to say that we owe it to the taxpayers of the community to do business as efficiently as possible," Singer said. "These are public funds."

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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