A Concord resident recently emailed me questioning what City employees have done to help fix the current budget deficit. This is my response:
Thank you for your e-mail regarding Measure Q. I would like to provide you with some important, additional background information about agreements recently reached with our employees.
The City has, in fact, implemented a salary freeze and salary reductions, beginning in July 2009. The City successfully negotiated significant employee pay and benefit reductions achieving a $3.4 million in reductions. This savings is the result of a combination of the reduction of employee benefits, increased employee contributions towards health and retirement benefits, multi-year salary freezes, and loss of pay through furlough days. These changes in total add up to between 10% and 15% cut in pay for our employees, depending upon their position. (An initial 5% salary reduction began in 2009 for most employees.) The City is pleased that our employees are participating in solving our budget problem.
This year, to balance the budget, the City was forced to make $7.7 million in cuts to every department. Current budget cuts include a Police Captain, a Lieutenant, holding open 3 vacant sworn police officer positions, eliminating one police canine, and closing the Police Department Field Offices. Additionally reductions were made to Senior Center hours, after-school programs, youth scholarships, street sweeping and storm drain maintenance.
Measure Q was placed on the ballot for Concord voters to choose between additional severe cuts and program reductions or additional revenue to maintain essential services. Unfortunately the cuts that have already been made would remain in place, and the City will still need to make additional cuts, but new revenue would prevent the need to eliminate as many as 35 positions across all departments.
In Fiscal Year 2010-11, there are no salary increases for any non-safety employees — in fact, due to the negotiated changes discussed above, these employees will be experiencing a reduction in take-home pay in excess of 7-12% from what they were earning in 2008. Public safety employees, while receiving two contractually-obligated raises in 2010, will be effectively giving up these raises in the form of increased contributions to their retirement and health benefits which will exceed the value of the raises. Finally, there are no bonuses to be paid to any City employees in 2010.
Thank you for your questions and interest in our current fiscal situation in Concord.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.