Boulder City unions agree to wage concessions

By Jean Reid Norman

Published Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 10:54 a.m.

Updated Wednesday, May 13, 2009 | 6:11 p.m.

Boulder City’s two employee unions have agreed to wage concessions expected to save the city $360,000.

Teamsters Local 14, which represents all city employees except the police, and the Police Protective Association agreed to stretch next year’s cost-of-living raises over two years, City Manager Vicki Mayes said.

City employees were due to receive a 4.5 percent cost-of-living increase, and police were due to receive 5 percent on July 1. They will now receive half of that on July 1 and the other half on July 1, 2010, Mayes said.

Employees with five years of service or less will still receive merit increases of 5 percent. The City Council will receive details of the new contracts at a May 19 public hearing on the final budget, she said. The hearing begins at 7 a.m. at City Hall, 401 California St.

In addition, Mayes and Finance Director Timothy Inch said, the unions agreed to allow a change at the Boulder City Municipal Golf Course to contracted maintenance. That move will save the city another $140,000 to $200,000 annually, depending on the course’s revenue. The Boulder Creek Golf Club is already using contracted maintenance.

The change at the municipal course was achieved by accepting three early retirements of employees and shifting five other employees to other jobs in the city, with some of them taking pay cuts.

Mayes plans to ask the City Council to approve a contract for $800,000 a year with TurfTech, the company that does maintenance at Boulder Creek.

“The golf course budget is now as low as it can possibly be at both locations,” Inch said. The change should allow the golf course to operate at a break-even level, he said.

The concessions were sought after the City Council got a look at the proposed budget for fiscal year 2009-10, which begins July 1. That proposed budget would have dipped into the city’s ending fund balance, which serves as a reserve, by $1.1 million. The fund balance is currently $3 million.

“I received the message loud and clear that they were not comfortable, nor am I, to draw down the fund balance by one-third,” Mayes said.

During union negotiations, the city agreed that it would not seek layoffs unless that ending fund balance dips below $1 million.

The city has a goal of keeping the fund balance at 20 percent of its general fund, which is $24 million, Inch said. That should put the ending fund at $5 million, where it was in 2007, he said.

“I am thankful the council did approve rebuilding the fund balance,” Mayes said. “We had been doing a good job until the last two years.”

CORRECTION: This story was updated to correct the amount of money wage concessions are expected to save the city.