CAMPBELL Plant closing prompts city to lay off five employees

Officials are hoping to regain the lost tax revenue.
CAMPBELL -- Five city employees are being laid off in the wake of budgetary cuts, but officials are hoping they will be put back to work in the future.
Firefighters Fred Shaffer, Leslie O'Hara and Frank Phillips, street department employee Dan Szenborn and police Officer Kenneth Arendas will be laid off effective Oct. 1.
Mayor Jack Dill said the cuts were necessary because of the closing of Cold Metal Products.
Dill said the city is losing between $160,000 and $180,000 a year in tax revenue because of the plant's closing.
Cold Metal filed for bankruptcy protection last month, one day after closing the plant. The cash-strapped company also closed a plant in Indianapolis but is maintaining plants in Ottawa, Ohio; Roseville, Mich.; and Canada.
Former workers were conducting a 24-hour-a-day vigil outside the plant to make sure nothing is removed. The union wants plant equipment to be left in the plant in case it is restarted.
Dill also is hoping the plant is restarted. He said should the plant be sold and reopened, the five city employees would likely be called back to work.
"We just don't know where this will go," the mayor said. "We are hoping that these layoffs will be for a short time."