Approval comes after a long and stormy session with the mayor.
It didn’t happen gracefully, but it finally happened.
“We now have a whole budget,” said City Administrator Mary Jo Briggs after a contentious meeting Tuesday in which the City Council tied up the loose ends for 2007 spending.
The decision to add five new full-time positions proved the biggest knot the council and administration were able to pull tight at the five-hour meeting.
While the final budget won’t be approved until later this month, the council agreed to boost the 144 employee roster with a new a deputy finance director, a budget analyst, a water resources engineer, a police officer and a capital projects manager.
The council also agreed to allow the Winslow Tomorrow planning project to hire an urban designer and a planner, each for two-year terms.
The total budgeted for the full-time and limited-term positions was set at about $550,000 for this year.
The mayor’s preliminary budget had requested 12 new positions at a cost of $800,000. But the council opted to defer all new hires until completion of the city’s “benchmarking” study, which recommended ways to boost government efficiency and service levels.
Using the study’s recommendations as a guide, Councilman Nezam Tooloee on Tuesday proposed setting city staffing levels at 148 full-time equivalents for this year, while adopting a five-year plan that would eventually reduce staff to 135.
The consultants who prepared the benchmarking study had warned that current hiring trends could swell the ranks of city employees to 176 by 2011.
That trend, Tooloee said, puts projects at risk.
“The council needs to change direction, otherwise you’ll continue to see projects not getting done,” he said. “Where’s (improvements to) Halls Hill Road, Grow Avenue, Wyatt Way, Wing Point, the community center, the senior center, the cultural center? It’s all not getting done. Why? It’s because our operating costs are so high.”
But Tooloee’s proposal was met by a rare censure by the mayor, who overruled the measure.
“The motion is out of order,” Mayor Darlene Kordonowy declared shortly after Tooloee’s motion was seconded by Councilman Bob Scales. “I’m totally surprised by the council’s action. We were going to talk about the budget tonight. Nobody said we’d talk about the benchmarking study. I had hoped we’d stay in good faith.”
Councilman Jim Llewellyn compared proposals to add city staff to the U.S. government’s plan to send thousands more military personnel to Iraq.
“It feels a lot to me like a surge, like the surge of more troops in Iraq,” he said. “I don’t know who’s going to pay for that at the federal level. I guess our grandchildren will pay for it. (City government) doesn’t have that luxury.”
Some councilors were incensed at Kordonowy’s censure of Tooloee’s proposed measure. Scales went so far as to try to immediately adjourn the meeting.
“This is not being done to play some game with the council,” Kordonowy said before declaring a recess to cool heated nerves.
During the 15-minute break, Tooloee urged Scales to reconsider adjournment and aim for a new approach to the staffing issue.
“Nezam said, ‘Look, let’s try dealing with staff another way and see how far we get,’” Scales said on Wednesday. “We didn’t want to make a silly thing bigger and have it delay the budget.”
Scales withdrew his motion to adjourn, allowing the council to take on staffing issues on an item-by-item basis.
The second half of the meeting went smoother, producing results both the administration and council could support.
In approving the new police position, the council opted to allow Police Chief Matt Haney choose how the new officer will be assigned.
The administration had on Tuesday re-submitted a proposal for two officers, one focused on schools and another on traffic rule enforcement. Police officials on Friday said the new position’s assignment has not yet been determined, but that traffic and school safety remain priorities.
The addition of a capital projects manager had not been requested by the administration but was seen by the council as a necessary position to jump-start lagging roads and non-motorized transportation projects.
Winslow Tomorrow Project Manager Sandy Fischer gave an impassioned plea for her new temporary staffers.
“I’ve done everything you’ve asked for,” she said. “But I did that working 60 hours a week to accomplish it. I’m not going to continue to do that. You can’t have one person directing, managing and producing the work.”
Fischer countered some councilors’ suggestions that she continue to borrow staff from other departments.
“Public Works is dealing with roads sliding off and Planning has lawsuits,” she said. “Making time for Winslow Tomorrow didn’t happen.”
The council gave a hesitant nod to the new limited-term hires, while approving the other five full-time jobs shortly before midnight.
“I think, in judging the results, I feel really good,” said Briggs on Wednesday morning. “Now we just really need to work on the collaborative process that gets us there.”
The council plans to host a public hearing on the 2007 budget on Jan. 31.
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Now hiring
The City Council approved five new full-time positions:
Capital projects manager: $100,000
Deputy finance director: $90,000
Police officer: $83,453
Budget analyst: $72,920
Water resources engineer: $63,846
