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One more layoff notice
Mayor Dean Bunkers said one more layoff notice is going out this week, bringing the total to six. He also said he has scheduled a meeting with Russ Walpole of the Teamsters next week.
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on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 1:15 pm and is filed under North Coast News.
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Obviously the issue is spending beyond even the current income levels. If I recall correctly, the property taxes were raised this year to the legal limit using all of the banked allowable increases.
I think that if they did not increase taxes and cut expenses in the past they would not be in the current situation.
The city could have lived within it’s means before and stopped trying to be everything to everyone. We cannot support programs and projects that do not create revenue for the city. We focus on tourism, but that is not enough to maintain a city. We have to stop acting like a big city and act like the town of 5000 residents that we are. Tourist will just have to be satisfied with what we can afford.
The economic situation now has limited the expected sales tax, excise tax and other income to the city. That combined with contracts that probably were not explained honestly to the council by the then city manager also contributed to the current layoffs. A downturn is something we should have been prepared for. It has happened in the past. We just did not learn from it. National Recreational Property is now gone. What we have left is home grown real estate sales and development based upon what we can locally advertise. We no longer have the national advertising of NRPI.
Back in 2002, I spoke several times to the then city council (Creighton, Vietz, Jordan, Estes, and Samuelson) and warned them they either had to raise taxes or start cutting expenses (including reducing the number of city employees), otherwise the city was going to be in deep trouble (it was obvious even back then). Thus, with seven years of continued unbridled spending and no corresponding tax increases, we are there. One of my suggestions was that we reduce the city worker’s hours to 35 per week to avoid the certainty of layoffs. Like many of my suggestions, this one, too, was ridiculed (“The union wouldn’t stand for it!”). Since he’s the only remaining member from that council (and it’s time for him to go, too), to Mr. Creighton I say: “Way to go, Dave, your lack of intestinal fortitude has lead directly to the misery of those who have been or will be laid off. Do you still want to brag about not having raised taxes?”