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Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Councilman Ron Natinsky Discusses the Budget
Pink Slips
Thursday, July 15, 2010
By RUDOLPH BUSH / The Dallas Morning News
About 500 city employees will get pink slips this year as Dallas works to balance its budget in a time of sinking tax revenue, City Manager Mary Suhm told a North Dallas service club Wednesday.
Suhm provided new details about her efforts to craft a budget to present to the City Council in August, saying that she has reduced the expected gap between revenue and expenses from a high of $130 million to about $18.8 million in a roughly $2 billion operating budget.
That reduction has come through plans for heavy cuts in city services but also from a series of savings measures like putting off the purchase of new police and firefighting equipment. In addition, recent indications that sales tax revenue may be on the upswing could help the city's bottom line.
Suhm said she now expects to be able to restore a number of high-priority services that were set to be cut.
For example, 34 of the city's 43 recreation centers will open for at least 40 hours a week under the current plan, instead of only 23 centers.
"Everybody in the organization is looking at the way they do business in an effort to maintain the services we provide," she said.
But when the City Council passes a balanced budget in September as required by law, there will be a definite impact that regular users of city services will see.
Libraries, cultural centers, and parks and recreation centers will all see funding slashed.
In a talk to the North Dallas Golden K Kiwanis Club and in an interview later, Suhm said she is working to minimize the effect of those cuts in a variety of ways.
Library cuts
Hours at branch libraries, for example, are not expected to be cut.
But of the 500 employees who will be laid off – almost 4 percent of the total city workforce – some 90 are library pages who spend much of their time shelving books. And even as workers are let go, funding for new books, magazines, and other materials will be cut yet again this year.
"Are the books going to be slower getting back on the shelves? Yes. Are the materials going to be fewer? Yes. But the libraries are going to be open," Suhm said.
Parks, too, will suffer from less attention by fewer employees. Litter won't be picked up as often and mowing will be decreased.
And though hours are expected to be restored at a number of recreation centers, it's unlikely those will operate at the same level if fewer people are available to staff them.
Members of the Kiwanis Club asked Suhm about plans for the Walnut Hill Recreation Center, where they meet. She said efforts are focused on keeping centers across Dallas open early in the mornings, when they are frequented by seniors, and during the hours after school, when many children rely on them as a place to go.
She stressed, though, that the services many people have come to expect from the city may not be available, or not available at the same level, perhaps for a long time to come.
"I do not think the economy will come roaring back. I do think it will come back, but I think that the slope on that line will be very slow," she said.
Suhm did not provide an exact breakdown of city employees who face pink slips because she said she did not want to identify any individuals.
The city currently has 12,875 employees. Of those, 7,411 are civilians and 5,464 are police officers and firefighters.
Though no sworn employees are expected to be laid off, there will be reductions of staff in most city departments. The library system is expected to lose the largest number of employees of any department.
Suhm said that most employees who are let go shouldn't expect to find work in other city departments – something that has been common in the past. The vacant jobs simply won't be available this year, she said.
Suhm already has said she expects civilians will face eight unpaid furlough days next year. In addition, they can expect a nearly 2 percent pay cut on average, she told the Kiwanis club.
"We have done this before. I'm hoping it's temporary and we can restore these cuts in pay over time," she said.
Union meetings
She continues to meet, meanwhile, with representatives of police and fire unions. But the city's sworn employees are still expected to take 5 unpaid furlough days next year.
There are also efforts to have them take comp days instead of overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week, she said.
Efforts to save money at City Hall are paying off, she said.
The city's new electricity contract will save the general fund – which pays for most city services – about $2.8 million next year. A new auditing contract will save about $500,000. The numbers are small relative to the city's total budget.
But in trying to close her deficit, and already having cut services and employee pay last year, Suhm said she was looking for "nickels and dimes in the couch."
• • • • •
Aug. 9 – City Manager Mary Suhm presents a proposed budget to the City Council.
Sept. 22 – The council adopts a balanced budget and sets the property tax rate.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Mary Suhm Narrows Deficit
Dallas budget gap whittled to $34.9 million
By RUDOLPH BUSH
Dallas' massive budget gap is slowly being narrowed through a series of difficult decisions and proposals that now includes five furlough days for police officers and firefighters.
Late Friday, City Manager Mary Suhm released her latest budget update, which includes $23 million in savings she expects from furloughing or otherwise reducing the compensation of police officers and firefighters.
That money, along with a host of other cuts and savings, has reduced the city's budget gap from a high of $131 million to $34.9 million, according to the presentation Suhm will give to the City Council on Wednesday. Dallas operates on roughly a $2 billion annual budget.
Suhm said that getting to this point in the process has been difficult. And it will only get more difficult as she pushes forward to close the remaining difference between anticipated revenues and the cost of providing city services.
"It's taken a lot of work to get here, and the budget still has some painful components so we're going to spend the next five weeks to get a budget that's responsive to the economic challenges and balances the impact on services," she said.
Suhm must present the council with a balanced budget in August. The council must approve a final budget in September to take effect Oct. 1.
The savings from furloughing sworn employees will help provide funds to restore some services that were on the chopping block, including drastic reductions in street maintenance and library hours.
Suhm said the current budget plan restores street funding to its current $28 million level, meaning there will be some money for rehabilitating sections of streets that have badly degraded.
She also restored some funding for branch libraries. Those will continue to operate on their current schedule, albeit with reduced staffing.
The central library, meanwhile, will be open 40 hours a week, compared with the 24 hours per week that was originally planned. However, the library's specialized subject floors will be open just three days a week.
Though some high-profile services are now funded, many more are still certain to be cut, and the size of Dallas' roughly $1 billion general fund budget will shrink by at least $50 million next year.
Suhm said she anticipates hundreds of the city's nearly 14,000 employees will receive layoff notices.
Remaining civilian employees will face eight unpaid furlough days. For five of those days, City Hall and other municipal buildings will close. Three furloughs will be taken when employees choose.
There will also be tiered pay cuts for many, with executives taking the highest percentage, until all civilian personnel costs are reduced by 5 percent, Suhm said.
Police and fire associations have not yet signed off on a final cost-cutting plan, but Suhm said she was hopeful she will realize the $23 million in savings that she included as a key highlight of her briefing to the council.
All police and fire furlough days would be scheduled on an individual basis by officers and firefighters and would not affect day-to-day operations.
Dallas Police Association President Glenn White could not be reached for comment.
It was all but assured that police officers and firefighters would share in cuts in the coming budget. The police and fire departments consume 60 percent of the city's general fund dollars, so balancing the budget without reducing their costs would have been all but impossible.
And while sworn city employees were largely spared from pay cuts last year, their civilian counterparts were hit with five unpaid furlough days.
Suhm stressed Friday that even as layoffs and pay cuts will deepen in the coming year, the budget cannot be balanced simply by reducing staff pay and numbers.
"It's important when you talk about services you want to maintain, employees provide those services," Suhm said.
Increased taxes and additional fees also won't close the budget gap.
Instead, it will take a combination of cost cutting and more sources of revenue to make up for the plunge in Dallas' property values that has swept tens of millions of dollars off the city's balance sheets.
Suhm has left open the possibility of recommending a tax increase for next year, although the council is closely divided on the issue.
Even a relatively steep 2.7 percent increase of 2 cents per $100 valuation in the current tax rate of 74.79 cents would raise just $15.4 million, less than half the remaining budget gap.
A plan to introduce some new fees, including one for Dallas residents to use city streets, has gotten a lukewarm reception from the City Council.
Other fee proposals may well be adopted, however. Those include charging residents $5 for a garage sale permit, increasing the multi-tenant building registration fee from $6 to $10 and increasing from $8 to $15 a tax on coin-operated amusement machines.
Suhm has already calculated revenue from those three fees into the budget plan she will present to the council Wednesday.
She said she will continue to hunt for ways to somehow raise revenue or cut costs to close the remaining $34.9 million gap and pay for the services it is intended to fund.
Those include such things as hours and programs at city recreation centers, school crossing guards, police community outreach and homeless outreach programs.
"I do think those are critical, and the difficulty will be figuring out how you are going to fund them," she said.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
One Idiot's Opinion
Shawn P. Williams: Budget woes a chance to remake libraries
Rumors of the public library's decline are proving fairly accurate: Patronage and lending are down while the cost of operation remains quite high. In this age of quick and fast, the library is too often slow and methodical.
That reality needs to guide City Hall's decisions as it puts the Dallas Public Library system on the budget chopping block. Yes, the slashing will be painful and messy, with inevitable cutbacks in operating hours and staff. And as someone whose mother insisted I have a library card growing up, that's disappointing.
But the truth is that libraries are not dying, they're dead. And these tough times offer our library system and its allies an opportunity to find new methods. We're all learning to do more with less, and the library is no exception.
What does less look like when it comes to the library? Besides fewer hours and staffers, it may mean fewer branches. Perhaps the system could expand its Bookmobile program, a perfect example of the library literally meeting customers where they are.
The library must be less museum – waiting for an audience to admire its wonder – and more laboratory. It must give residents more reasons to walk through the doors.
For example, a popular attraction is when authors or even residents come into a branch to read to patrons. And some have performing spaces, such as the Black Box Theater at the Hampton-Illinois branch. Additionally, the "how to" features deserve expansion, with more classes such as how to build a website or create a Facebook page.
A recent Dallas Morning News article noted that the library system has 805 computers. That's not nearly enough. When I was a sales representative, I often stopped at libraries during my lunch hour to browse the internet. Whether at the Oak Lawn or Park Forest branch, there was almost always a wait to use a computer.
Computer access is definitely a resource residents are looking for. Not only should the library system assess its budget priorities to get more computers into the system, but also secure other technology aimed at e-book reading.
Sure, nothing beats the feel, the smell or the texture of a book. You can't turn down the pages on an eReader or scribble notes with a pencil in the margins. But these are the delivery methods young people are looking for, and libraries should become the place to find them.
While the library is still vital for families, it was never designed to only serve children. Libraries compete with big book stores for adult patrons and must find a way to lure them back. It's going to take more than lattes and paninis to win back those who now use coffee shops and cafes as their study hall and meeting place.
Why can't the library start selling new books? If scores of patrons are on a waiting list to check out the new Oprah biography, might some buy a new copy from the library if it was available? As a southern Dallas resident, at least a couple of libraries are closer to my house than the nearest major book store. And when was the last time that your favorite author held a book signing at the local library?
I'm not advocating abandoning the system as we know it. But budget cuts are coming, so what better time to transform libraries from a relic of the past into a tool for the future
Friday, June 4, 2010
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