WPCNR QUILL & EYESHADE. News & Comment by John F. Bailey. May 17, 2010:
It’s cross-your-fingers time at the Common Council.
And for police officers and fire fighters. Rumors are the council will decide on layoffs of uniformed personnel.
Tonight the Common Council meets at 7:30 P.M. to “decide” on the 2010-11 City of $160.2 Million White Plains budget – or whatever the budget totals at this time after the CSEA and TEAMSTER union givebacks mysteriously materialized last week.
It might actually be about $5 Million lower, but no one knows because there has been no status report and recalculation of the numbers reflecting the Teamster/CSEA givebacks. Do the givebacks mean the budget does not have to pay the raises for those two unions? I think so. We will learn tonight.
However, unlike any year in the past, the exact position of the budget and the supposed deficit has proceeded with virtually no Common Council public expression and probing exploration of budget options the city faces.
Instead, the Common Council has watched city Commissioners put out detailed presentations, asked for explanations, which of course have not made their way into the light of the public eye before tonight.
In what promised to be a transparent administration, the public has at this time the impression that the primary effort of this administration is to jab back at the unions, especially the police and fire unions for schmoozing the four holdover members of the Common Council, who either were not paying attention, not reading the legislation, or simply did not want to be busy during the holidays last fall when they allowed the 12-hour shifts for the police patrols to become part of the police contract, 24 hour shifts for the firefighters and acceded to binding arbitration last August, guaranteeing 3.75% and 4% pay raises.
The Teamsters and CSEA unions have now sold out the police and fire unions by going along with the administration to give back negotiated 3.75% raises in return for no layoff promises, and no pay raise in 2010. Yet, those raises will jump back into the mix in 2011-2012 when times are better. Plus they tiered health benefits for new employees.
Whatever happened to union solidarity? Sticking up for union members, and all those good things? The police and fire unions must not be feeling too happy about the CSEA-TEAMSTER leadership right now. I am glad I do not pay CSEA and Teamster dues.
At this point, the administration says these city shakedowns of the CSEA and TEAMSTERS will cut the city tax increase to 14.5%. The council wants to cut more.
But, we have no idea how they stand, and how strong a reaction the council (always sniffing the air like 6 drowsy grizzly bears) will have to any public reaction to the administration plan to cut 39 police and fire uniform personnel which would chop another $4 million off the budget which by my estimate would bring the budget down another 9% considering that according Budget Director Michael Genito says that for every $450,000 in expenditures there has to be a 1% increase in the city tax rate.
Of course, though, the Mayor has said it is up to the Common Council as to whether police and fire uniform staffs should be cut. If the Council pink-slipped 39 uniform personnel, that would cut the property tax increase down to 5.5%. And the three Common Councilmembers facing reelection in November, 2011, can cross their fingers on the crime wave and fire response time and emergency preparedness effects such layoffs might have.
The question is, during the budget review of the Department of Public Safety two weeks ago, no one on the council questioned Commissioner of Public Safety David Chong on the budget effects and possible layoff scenarios. The Commissioner in his public comments that night drew a picture of the possibility of retirements impacting the hierarchy of the police department most severely. He put up slides telling the council the Police Department Uniformed Force has 9 vacancies now, and of the 206 current active members, 4 are out on long-term, sick/injured and one is on military leave. In the future, the Commissioner stated 15% (31 of 206) are eligible to retire.
The Council never took the public opportunity to explore options with the Commissioner that night.
They did not ask in public can we live with 206, and not hire the 9 vacancies (that would take care of 9 of the 20 layoffs the city wants).
They did not ask the Commissioner how many of the 31 uniformed police eligible to retire were going to retire to his knowledge. I could see asking this dumb question: Commissioner, how many of those senior officers do you feel would have to be replaced if they retired?
The council did not ask any mix and match scenario questions as to how police uniform personnel, balancing retirements with present vacancies, could be used to get the $4.5 Million saving the administration wants. The excuse given by Council President Tom Roach, was the city is in union negotiations and could not ask those questions. Poppycock! We are talking ability to fill holes here through attrition – it has nothing to do with negotiation. The council did not explore this in public, at least.
The same situation exists in the fire bureau, according to Chong. He said the fire bureau has 9 vacancies down from 170 full-strength. And of the 161 current active members, two are out long-term/sick-injured, 1 on military leave and 2 are retiring, and 35% a whopping 56 firefighters are eligible for retirement.
Again the council did not ask questions about rigs being taken out of service, how cuts of 19 firefighters (proposed by the administration, according to fire union sources) affect response time, and how many of the 56 retirement-eligible might opt for retirement.
This truly puzzles the rational reporter. Why not?
Perhaps they might have gotten information on these scenarios since that time. But, we the public do not know if they have explored this with Commissioner Chong privately. The council should before they accede to the administration plan to cut back department strengths to pre-2001 levels.
What would you do?
The Common Council has twiddled its thumbs during the most lackluster uninspired budget reviews this reporter has seen in the decade I have covered city hall.
The council has slept-walked through these budget meetings this year.
The Council has gone along with the administration budget-cutting efforts characterized by instituting a sewer rent to make a budget sleight-of-hand maneuver to take a million and change off the general fund budget, disguising what is really a tax increase.
They have gone along with the ¼ per cent sales tax increase to be dedicated to fund balance replenishment.
They have gone along with an increase in parking tickets, (which they were not consulted on), and if they were consulted on it privately by the administration, shame on them for not discussing it in view of the decline of the White Plains sales tax receipts (flat last month year-to-year) and down 8% over the first 10 months of the year.
They have not touched the hot issue of certiorari toughness. The certs from the wonderful commercial property owners in White Plains are killing the residents, and certainly killing the school district budget. Does anyone consider a cost of doing business fee for increased services in the drinking district? Has anyone considered a surcharge on commercial and residential certiorari filers equivalent to making up the previous year’s assessment reduction? No.
Has anyone explored anything? How about a commuter tax?
The Budget and Management Committee has made the following recommendations:
- Reduce the proposed tax increase significantly (from18.9%…now down to14.5%) mainly through negotiations with the unions.
- Increase the fund balance – this was the thinking behind the dedication of the ¼% sales tax being dedicated to fund balance transfusion.
- Bond the cash-to-capital budget (which could knock off another ¾ of a million off the budget.
- Pay tax certioraris as you go. (This does not make sense to me. It means more cash expense out of the budget.) However, does the Budget & Management Committee have a creative solution to certioraris? No.
- Reduce the health care buyout. That saves about $230,000
The city commercial base has to be looked at carefully and soon, not just lamenting about the commercial results.
In fact, that’s a whole other column. The city has to get to the bottom of whether our dramatic parking rates and ticketing policies are discouraging consumers from coming to White Plains to shop. Is it simply retail vacancies behind the sales tax decline? Is it our parking policies? No one knows.
Another thing the Council did not explore is that they have guaranteed jobs for the Teamsters and the CSEA members in the face of dwindling city revenues.
Why? Is protecting garbage and leaf pickoff conveniences more vital than public safety? I mean that is what that policy says.
Last Friday two trucks visited the WPCNR World Headquarters. One truck picked up my commingled garbage (recyclables), another picked up my regular garbage. Why could we not send one truck?
How about providing a dumpster system, as they do in Florida communities where there are three dumpsters in a neighborhood, one for paper, one for regular garbage, one for commingles. Just a thought.
And think about this: guaranteeing CSEA jobs in the police department. There are 41 CSEA employees in the Police Department. The CSEA-ers apparently are now untouchable. So we keep the desk jockeys and get rid of police which take much longer to train?
That is not a good decision. I do not want to give the impression the CSEA-ers are not as valuable, but by guaranteeing their positions no matter what, the city really limits its options.
How can they do that? The City School District did the same thing in a way by giving raises in the second half of the 2011-12 School Year in face of declining revenues. That is not good policy.
The Council supported increasing the library budget. They asked the director lots of questions about how the library could jigger its schedule. Probably the director has supplied answers, but the public has not seen them yet. Perhaps tonight. Apparently the library is far more important to the Council that its police and fire department performance, because they grilled the Library Director intensely, but never explored with Commissioner Chong similar issues at least in public, they did not.
Layoffs? The Mayor’s Chief of Staff John Callahan reported to WPCNR that as of June 30, 2009, ten months ago, the city had 969 full-time employees. As of December 31, they had 940. As of April 30-2010, the city has “approximately” 906 full-time employees. The reduced number “is due to attrition, consolidations and layoffs,” Callahan said.
The council has gored no oxes yet. And when you are up for reelection in 17 months, you do not want to spill blood in the sand. Money, maybe, but not blood.
However, we do not know precisely where we stand on the budget with all these issues floating around I have just mentioned.
Perhaps tonight, the “transparency” will materialize.
Memo to the Common Council: The Titanic did not have enough lifeboats.
Better count yours.
