Council tackles budget woes, layoffs loom as city must slash about $1 million
Although area media reported Monday that the city of Lincoln is planning to lay off 200 employees, Mayor Spencer Short said Tuesday the number of layoffs will be significantly lower. “We only have 230 employees total,” Short said. “That’s how crazy this whole thing is.” Although Short would not say how many jobs will be cut, he said that information will be available Friday. “We want to be able to tell our employees first,” Short said. (The News Messenger will put the number of layoffs and which jobs are cut online Friday at www.lincolnnews-messenger.com.) The layoffs are part of an effort to cut a little more than $1 million from the budget. It won’t just be the lower-level employees whose positions are at risk. “We are looking at all levels, including management,” Short said. “We have to.” All of the General Funded departments will experience cuts to some degree, according to city of Lincoln officials. “While it is not possible at this time to state that no public safety personnel will be laid off, rest assured that city management is doing everything within their power to minimize the impact to public safety and other service areas that could affect the citizens of our community,” according to a press release Monday by Jill Thompson, the city of Lincoln’s spokeswoman. “We don’t know what that looks like at the moment,” Thompson added Wednesday, about the police and fire departments’ cuts, “but the police makes up 47 percent of the General Fund and the fire department is 20 percent.” Today, City Manager Jim Estep is scheduled to brief City Council in closed session on results of the budget meetings with employee-labor groups. Although the City Council’s closed session will determine how the budget will be balanced, including how many layoffs are necessary, Thompson said that final action will be taken at the City Council meeting set for Tuesday night. Last week’s talks with six employee groups was to find concessions that could be made by the groups in lieu of layoffs, according to Thompson. The six employee groups are the Police and Fire Midmanagement/Supervisory Group, the City Midmanagement/Confidential Group, the Lincoln Police Officers Association, the Lincoln Fire Suppression Officers Association, the Professional Administrative Group and the Classified Group. “The purpose (of holding the closed-session meeting) is that, by then, we should know the status of the group meetings,” Estep said last Friday. “The point will be to get their feedback. So far, the meetings have gone well and I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to save a lot of jobs.” Unfortunately, if nothing changes, layoffs will still be necessary, Estep said last Friday. After today’s closed-session meeting with City Council, Estep will have advised the council on where the cuts should come from, pending the talks with employee groups and possibly receiving additional direction from the council, Thompson said. The ongoing situation has not been easy for city employees wondering about job security. “My department, the Parks and Buildings Department, is solely general funded,” city employee Scott Boynton said last week. “I’m unsure right now about what will happen. We’re hoping for the best.” Mayor Spencer Short said he hopes City Council can keep as many jobs as possible. “We have some great employees who are likely to become casualties. We’ve got no possibility for a bailout,” Short said. “We’re on our own. It’s just surviving right now…making sure we get through the next couple of years and maintaining the high level of service to the community.” As the Legislature battles to balance California’s budget shortfall, Short said he expects Lincoln to take a financial hit on redevelopment fees. Short said the state’s budget crisis is an example of the need to act now, however hard that may be, to prevent having an even bigger crisis later, a sentiment that was the consensus between City Council, Estep and the nine department heads at the first budget-restructuring meeting in November. The cuts are an effort to balance the city’s budget, which is currently experiencing a $1- million deficit in the general fund and $350,000 from the development fund. “It’s tough, said Lincoln resident Bill Cook. “They’re going to have to trim someplace. They should trim a little from everywhere, maybe leaving police and fire alone.” Not all residents, however, have the same outlook. “As far as I’m concerned, they ought to keep on cutting them,” said Jerry Fackrell, a local small-business owner. “They should never have built that new City Hall. They should have expanded the old one. We need parking and they could have made a lot there. Why aren’t they thinking about the people who have businesses here? I think they should have maybe sought out some better advice.”
– Brandon Darnell can be reached at brandond@goldcountrymedia.com.
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Go ahead and tell the families of those who are getting laid off that the rumors are greatly exaggerated!!! The city is trying to keep this big secret from the public, because they know they messed up!! The city is looking to lay off anywhere from 5-10 police officers and it is leaning more towards 10!! That is more than half of the patrol officers they have! Do you think that is going to make the City of Lincoln a very safe place to be? Do you think that the officers that are left to do the work are giong to be very safe either? The Police Department has 7 sergeants! They only have 4 shifts!!! What do they need 7 sergeants for? You only need one sergeant per shift! Yet the Police Chief and the City Manager refuse to lay off any of the sergeants! They are refusing to lay off ANY admin. at all! If they laid off 2 of their extra sergeants, the salary that those sergeants get would save about 4 Patrol Officers jobs! This is compeltely ridiculous! When my husband first starting working here, we thought it would be a wonderful place for him to work, but we were given a lot of empty promises from the city!!! The city has known for a long time that they were in this situation and they have tried to hide it from not only the public but from the city workers as well! They have put many of the people who work to keep this city a safe place in a bad position, and trying to find a way to now keep roofs over their families heads and food on their tables!!!!!! They are also putting the City of Lincoln at risk!!!
The Lincoln Fire Departments current staff is 26 personnel (3 of those positions being Chief Officers) That leaves 23 firefighters to protect 43,000 people from fires, medical emergencies, train derailments, vehicle accidents, Hazardous materials spills, gas and water leaks, help back up from a fall, the baby choking at the table. That is 7 maybe 8 firefighters per day. Lincoln Fire ran more than 3,000 calls last year and with the city talking about cutting anywhere between 1 and 6 positions that leaves possibly 17 firefighters (5 to 6 daily) in our once tiny city. If the fire department losses 1 firefighter that puts one engine out of service. I know I do not feel safe living in a community with only 5 or 6 firefighters on shift daily. What happens if they are on another call? That delays help even longer. The Lincoln Fire Department has the lowest number of staff of any city its size in California I believe. Please don't let the two brand new fire stations fool you, those were built with one time monies from development fees and will be standing in 100 years. I really do not see how you can lay anyone off from a fire department that is staffed so low. I think we need to drag the old city manager(Jerry Johnson) back to Lincoln and prosecute him. The recession in whole is not to blame for all of the cities problems, poor management is. I do believe the new City Manager (Jim Estep) will take Lincoln back to the top but the losses we take to get there could greatly effect our lives (literally). I'm scared!! Are you?
City of Lincoln budget cuts
Some of our City department heads live out of Lincoln which increases a gas bill that we don’t need. I viewed the Agenda/Contracts on the City Website. This info is public knowledge. Did you know that the Police chief, Fire chief, Librarian, and the Human Resources manager just got some pretty big pay increases? The Librarian makes an est. $105,000 plus a year that was just signed 11/08. Since the 11/08 there has been $266,566.90 est. in raises to the department heads. I hope they didn’t accept these pay increases. City of Lincoln department heads for one year combined make estimated $705,000.00 wow that’s a lot! While these folks got raises the workers in city are facing Pink slips! Did the previous City manager see this was coming? Is this why he retired and is collecting a nice retirement while others are losing theirs? I could go on but runny out of room!
The city is trying to make the public believe that they are doing everything they can do to keep from laying off any Police, and that is a load of bull!!! They want the remaining officers to all take a 10% pay decrease! They aren't going to do that and they shouldn't!! They have already given up any raises for the next 3-5 years! They have given up their deferred comp! And they have either already given up their cost of living raises, as well as their merit raises, or that is what the city is trying to get them to give up as well! They are trying to milk the officers out of as much as they can, so they don't have to give up anything!!! The fact that these city officials have been given raises while they are laying off so many Public Safety people is outrageous!!! They can go ahead and try to lie to the public and get them to believe that they are trying to keep from laying off all of these people, but the public deserves to know the truth!!!!