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Despite some objections, Warren OKs ’09 budget
The budget was passed with one amendment to its original form.
WARREN — The city has its 2009 budget in place, but some city council members remain displeased with the spending plan that calls for laying off more than 30 police officers and firefighters.
In a special meeting Wednesday afternoon, council voted to suspend the required public readings of the $28.6 million budget and approve it.
Council members Robert Dean, D-at large, and Susan Hartman, D-7th, both voted against suspension of the readings and budget approval.
Hartman said she requested, but never received, information from the auditor’s office that would have been pertinent to her decision on the spending plan and, therefore, could not vote for it.
Dean said he simply could not vote in favor of a budget that would eliminate so much of the city’s safety forces.
“Somebody has to say that you just can’t lay off a quarter of your police department,” he said.
Those cuts in safety forces and additional cuts in other departments, however, will be included in the 2009 budget.
Council decided to lay off 31 police officers and firefighters starting Jan. 1 to balance the budget, a proposal made last month by Mayor Michael O’Brien. An additional eight employees in other departments also would lose their jobs Jan. 1.
Those job reductions, along with cuts in other expenses, will add up to $3.2 million to balance the budget for next year. The city’s general fund budget for this year was $28.7 million.
The city will have 20 fewer police officers next year, taking the department down to 62, including Police Chief John Mandopoulos. Fire Chief Ken Nussle has said the fire department is likely to have to close the Atlantic Street station.
The budget was passed with one amendment — an amendment that some council members hope will be a revenue-generating tool in the future.
Councilwoman Helen Rucker, D-at large, earlier this week asked council to consider amending the proposed budget to take $65,000 from the finance department allocation and transfer that money to the income tax department to keep one additional person in that department. That additional person, she said, could continue investigations and increase revenue to the city.
The income tax department was slated to lose two employees at the start of the year and another employee halfway through the year.
Councilman Fiore Dippolito, D-1st, was not in favor of making the amendment, saying he was not comfortable telling a department what personnel it would need to function.
Councilman Daniel Crouse, D-at large, said the additional person in the income tax department would be needed, if not now then certainly in the future.
“We need people to find taxes. We need people out there to find every tax dollar we are owed. To create a roadblock to collecting money in the condition that we are in doesn’t make sense,” he said.
The O’Brien administration came up with an alternate plan to take $50,000 from finance and transfer $16,000 of that money to the income tax department to keep a department employee on staff that would have been laid off midway through the year. The remaining $34,000 would be a savings to the general fund.
Council approved the budget with that alternate plan.
Dean said the city, even with a balanced budget for 2009, must look to bring in additional funds.
“The only answer here is revenue. If we do not get another revenue stream in here, next year will be worse than this year,” he said.
According to Dean those revenue streams will likely have to be speed-camera surveillance and a “sin tax” — a tax on alcohol and tobacco — which he said could generate about $3 million.
jgoodwin@vindy.com