by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The mayor’s office expects to cut as many as 220 jobs from the City’s payroll, but it’s unclear how many current City employees the cuts will put out of work.
“These are positions, not people that we’re talking about,” City policy chief Adam Hollingsworth clarified to the City Council finance committee Monday.
Hollingsworth’s comment followed Dan Kleman’s estimate that the mayor’s office would cut between 175 and 220 positions. The number won’t be final until Mayor John Peyton gets Council approval for his 2006-07 budget.
Once a budget number is set, the mayor’s office will assess how many positions and people need to be cut from the City’s payroll, said spokesperson Misty Skipper. Most of the positions cut will likely be vacant, she said.
“We have more than 200 vacancies currently, but we won’t know until the budget is final how that matches up with the positions we’re going to cut,” she said.”
Hollingsworth said the cuts are the product of an ongoing organizational effectiveness review conducted throughout the City’s departments. The cuts are based on recommendations from department heads.
City Chief Operating Officer Dan Kleman said the cuts would “have very, very little effect on our current employees.” City Council member Reggie Fullwood said his previous discussions with the mayor’s office about the cuts didn’t sound as optimistic.
“The last time I heard, some actual, physical individuals were going to lose their jobs,” he said.
Discussion of the cuts merged with a debate over a proposed early retirement program for City employees. Council member Lad Daniels spoke against the limited early retirement program. Facing a tight labor market, the City should be looking at ways to attract good employees, not for ways to get rid of them, he said.
“What we’re looking at in the next 15 to 20 years is a huge shortage of employees,” he said. “Unemployment is at 3 percent, we should be thinking about what are we going to do to get people to stay longer.”
On the other side of the issue, Fullwood and Council member Gwen Yates argued in favor of the early retirement option. They look at it as a way to clear out some of the dead wood from the City’s payroll.
“I think we all know people who don’t like their (City) jobs and who are just kind of hanging on for their pensions,” said Fullwood. “In some cases, we’re retaining people who don’t want to be retained.”
The early retirement bill did not pass. It received a 3-2 majority of votes from the Finance Committee but needed four votes to move on.