City eyes ways to cut budget
Ketchum Council tries to label $60,000
to ensure employees get raises
By GREGORY FOLEY
Express Staff Writer
Ketchum city officials this week continued
seeking means to cut the proposed 2004-2005 budget to ensure city employees
receive a scheduled pay raise.
Although the plan could leave some city
programs and projects underfunded, Mayor Ed Simon and members of the City
Council indicated they are committed to cutting $60,000 from the city’s draft
$9.7 million spending plan for the 2004-2005 fiscal year.
In a special budget discussion Tuesday,
July 13, council members took a close look at expenditures proposed to fund the
city’s Planning, Building and Parks departments.
The council did not direct City
Administrator Ron LeBlanc to make any specific cuts to the draft budget but did
identify several potential programs that could be eliminated.
Council members debated at length whether
the city could afford to hire a new part-time staff member in the Building
Department and if they should finance the implementation of a costly
downtown-parking analysis completed earlier this year.
Councilwoman Terry Tracy said she might
stand against the addition of any new city staff.
"I’m just very reluctant to add staff when
we’re asking departments to cut their budgets," she said.
Indeed, with the 2004-2005 budget being
characterized as very "tight," LeBlanc and department heads have already cut
hundreds of thousands of dollars from the first incarnation of the budget to
bring expenses in line with city revenues.
On Tuesday, Parks and Recreation Director
Kirk Mason—who proposed a department budget equal to that of the current fiscal
year—told the council that his department has many needs that will inevitably go
unfunded in 2004-2005.
Tracy, Mason’s predecessor as parks and
recreation director, was sympathetic.
"I think that the Parks Department has
always been among the Sisters of the Poor," she said.
Harold Moniz, planning director, said he
wants to "get the ball rolling" in implementing recommendations made in a
recently released parking study by Oregon-based consultant Kittelson &
Associates. Generally, the study recommends the city start increasing its
management of parking in the city limits.
However, Moniz conceded that adequate
funding of the plan, at least in the 2004-2005 fiscal year, is unlikely.
On Wednesday, LeBlanc said he intends to
work with the City Council to find the approximately $60,000 necessary to
provide so-called salary "step increases" for all 76 city workers, except
department heads. He said the city might ultimately employ a combination of cuts
and revenue-estimate adjustments.
The step increases would represent
approximately 3 percent of the employees’ salaries and would be given in
addition to a 1.5 percent cost-of-living-adjustment.
With cuts being sought to fund employee
raises, some city residents are wondering how the city will proceed with funding
a set of proposed capital improvements. The budget allocates a mere $185,000 in
2004-2005 for a list of proposed improvements.
LeBlanc said Wednesday he will likely
advise the council later this summer to seek a bond issue to make "basic
improvements"—such as new lighting and sidewalks—to the commercial core.
Budget discussions are scheduled to
continue next week.