Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Monday, Nov. 30, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Oscar Goodman
Sun Archives
- Mayor: Morale not good among LV city employees (11-19-2009)
- Las Vegas to lay off 19 city employees as part of budget cuts (11-18-2009)
- Layoffs on table in dealing with LV budget shortfall (11-17-2009)
- Las Vegas officials seek public input on budget cuts (11-6-2009)
The hints began dropping at the Nov. 18 City Council meeting: The announced layoffs of a few Las Vegas city workers likely won’t be the last.
“This is just a drop in the ocean as to many more cuts,” Councilman Ricki Barlow said.
As city managers look ahead to a projected $430 million budget shortfall over the next five years, top officials and union leaders who represent city workers agree there’s more pain to come — potentially a lot more. This is likely to come through a combination of layoffs and pressure on the unions to come back to the table to talk about wage and benefit cuts.
During a recent radio interview, City Manager Betsy Fretwell said the city and its workers’ unions might not have any choice but to reopen talks — negotiations that appeared resolved just months ago.
“We have to strike a balance, I think, between job preservation and the preservation of compensation for the individual — wages and benefits,” Fretwell said on KNPR’s “State of Nevada.”
Fretwell said the city needs to keep paying its workers “fair wages,” but that they can’t be out of sync with the realities of the local economy. “And I think our labor leaders understand that,” she said.
Chris Collins, executive director of the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, which bargains for city marshals, said, “There certainly are going to have to be talks about this, but we just don’t know where they are going to lead.”
“Are there going to be cuts in personnel? I’d venture to say yes,” said Collins. “How deep, we don’t know.”
Don King, the new president of the Las Vegas City Employees’ Association, said he’s expecting another round of layoffs as soon as March. King’s union represents 1,550 of the city’s 2,700 employees.
The city’s budget numbers, King said, are potentially devastating. Each city worker costs $100,000 per year in salary and benefits, he estimates. And the city is predicting a $60 million budget cut in fiscal year 2011 alone. That means that if the city decides to erase the shortfall just through layoffs, 600 jobs could be at risk, he said.
At the Nov. 18 council meeting, city officials announced the city was eliminating 74 positions, including 54 that are vacant. The remaining 20 include one worker who will transfer to another job, two part-time workers and 17 full-timers.
Though 19 layoffs were announced, the process has been complicated by all the “bumping” going on, King said. Bumping is the union practice that has allowed eight of the 19 workers to shift the layoff to someone with less seniority. In turn, the more-senior worker has taken the laid-off worker’s position.
In addition to the job cuts, officials said the remaining vacancies will be frozen until March, including public safety jobs; travel and training programs are being suspended; and construction projects that are paid for out of the city’s general fund will be delayed if they haven’t already been contracted.
The construction freeze would not affect the proposed new city hall, which would not be paid for out of the general fund.
The cause of the budget shortfall is sharply declining sales tax revenues the city receives from the state.
The head of another of the four unions that bargain with the city, Dean Fletcher, president of the International Association of Firefighters Local 1285, said it was difficult to judge exactly what his union would agree to, in large part because the union had to base its position on the city’s projections, which could be off-base.
“All we have are (City Finance Director) Mark Vincent’s projections,” Fletcher said. “We don’t have any real numbers to look at. It’s definitely a concern.”
Union leaders are irritated because each agreed to cost-of-living freezes or reduced raises and other benefit cuts in negotiations this year.
As a result of this uncertainty, city workforce morale is near an all-time low. Even Mayor Oscar Goodman, a relentless optimist about the city’s prospects, has conceded this.
“Morale can’t be good,” Goodman said at his most recent news conference. “Nobody’s happy that the guy they’ve had a cup of coffee with or a martini with is not going to be here.”
The mayor followed that up with one of his patented, not-so-veiled threats. Everybody, he said — meaning the unions — “is going to work together and pull the oar in the same way.” Otherwise, “everybody’s on their own and we do what we have to do.”
As might be expected, this hasn’t been lost on city workers. Of several employees interviewed by the Sun, most were reluctant to be quoted or identified. But all expressed roughly the same thought: They’re anxious, and not just about what might happen a year or two from now. For the first time, they’re scared about what the next several months might hold.
“There’s a lot of fear, and I think that’s normal, because we don’t know what’s happening and if it’s going to affect us personally. It’s a very rough time for all of us,” said one employee who has worked for the city for more than a decade.
“I came here in boom times,” the employee said. “It just seemed like it would never end.”
Lots of fat to cut. Lay off across the board. Oust the union. Get rid of the ridiculous pay for all employees and benefits as well. Get in line with the public sector. We are sick and tired of OUR MONEY being pissed away on these people.
This is called common sense.
Get back to reality ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The unions either froze cost of living or took reduced raises? City employees still have not taken a pay cut. Almost all the residents of the city have taken a pay cut.
I wonder if paying the private law firm of Kemp, Jones & Coulthard $3.3 million for an ARBITRATION HEARING (not even a full trial) and then losing another $2.2 million at that arbitration hearing hurt the City budget?
$3.3 million for an arbitration hearing? Did Brad Jerbic go over those bills? Did he negotiate a lower hourly rate, since business is so slow, why wasn't this legal work put out for public bid?
Who picked this law firm anyway? The $3.3 million Kemp, Jones, & Coulthard made to do ONE arbitration hearing on defective tennis courts could have paid for how many city workers to keep their jobs?
from what ive read there are alot of +100k salaries at the city,maybe they should cut some of those fat-cats loose
Oh, my friends it is not all doom and gloom. Think about it for a minute as our city fathers and mothers are dreaming of ways to spend your taxes on a new elaborate magnificent city hall. Do we need it? Yes, probably so, but not at this time of declining economic conditions.Our visionary leaders are dreaming 24/7 of ways to spend your hard earned tax dollars in a depression economy.
Let's review a bit here for a moment. We have heard about Oscar's dream of using funds for a 'Gangsta Museum' that in all likelihood will fail shortly after it is finished. Then, we have heard about big plans for a massive sports arena to rival any in the world right here in downtown Las Vegas! Remember that one fell through like hot iron through a block of ice.
We have had our experiences with Neonopolis, a major investment that failed miserably; We had visions proposed of massive business development near the old Union Pacific yards. A proposed world class major medical center, a world class art and music theatre; and, a Goodman dream of yet again a major baseball stadium in the same area.
City politicians long ago sold Fremont Street, the iconic symbol of our city worldwide, to the Golden Nugget and other gaming establishments to the point that street no longer really belongs to the city taxpayers. The once famous Fremont Street is now a gallery of gaudy, cheap merchant stands and a ridiculous overhead canopy light show that has done little to improve the development of dowtown Las Vegas.
Our city no longer has a main street for hometown parades as we now use 4th street as our route for parades; in any other city this side street would be considered little more than a paved alleyway and not a major parade venue.
YEAH!
Bash those city employees right back to the stone age! More people on the unemployment lines, that's what we need! More foreclosures!
Bankruptcies!
You goofballs that CHEER when people lose their jobs sicken me.
from what ive read they're alot of +1ook salaries down at the city,maybe they should look into cutting those people back or getting rid of them completely
The City of Las Vegas has a custodian working somewhere that makes 44 thousand dollars a year.
WTF! It's a minimum wage job for chrissakes. How could this be?
I think if the city made some necessary cuts in wages and benefits and brought them in line with the private sector that no layoffs would be needed. Why doesn't anyone at the city get real and make this happen? Because they are all beneficiaries of the bloated salaries and benefits.
How much more bull crap do we have to put up with that oozes daily from city hall about how this project or that will save downtown form total collapse and decay? These bozos belong in a circus for all of the looney ideas they generate to solve this or that problem.
Many years ago, Mayor Oren Gragson deliberately and viciously drove stable businesses from downtown Las Vegas to establish the Boulevard Mall as the business center for the community. His monetary interests were centered there at the time. He tried but failed to keep the Meadows Mall from opening and being a success; again, another move promoted by his own personal financial interests and greed.
Las Vegas has a long history of incompetent fools who have posed as Mayor of the city. Our current mayor is but one of a long list of buffons who have had the role.
Mayor Bill Briare had his tiled dice on Fremont, Jan Jones screwed plastic tubing to city hall and left us with expensive trolly bus medallions; what we have today is just a continuation of the wasteful, greedy, thoughtless and incompetent management of the city by country bumpkins. politicians
Like usual, the problem with union employee layoffs is that the young, hard working, more productive employees will go first and the older, higher paid, less productive employees get to stay. The fairest way to deal with the budget problem is to have across the board cuts for ALL EMPLOYEES equivalent to the budget deficit. But the management and powerful unions will protect their interests and will most likely sacrifice the younger workers to keep their pays and benefits.
Sergio,
Thank you for your vision. I think his wife is absolutely gorgeous. I will have pleasant dreams of her bashing in the SUV as the poor Tiger dashes off in desperation from her screaming, swinging abuse of his very expensive 3 iron. What do you suppose he didn't do that got her so fired up? It was two-thirty, for cryin' out loud!
The unions either froze cost of living or took reduced raises? City employees still have not taken a pay cut. Almost all the residents of the city have taken a pay cut.
*****************************************************
Neiman1, I'm assuming you work for the city?
The end is near for one and all The great city of Las Vegas will crumble in the face of the world-wide depression.
Cities across the land will disappear into the landscape, people will be reduced to fending for themselves. They will eat their young to survive. Governments will be over-run by the revolt that will crush them.
And to think that all of this could have been averted simply if greed had not driven everyone to continuously demand for more.
Now, with housing not worth the materials they were built with, jobs evaporating so fast. Businesses down-sizing, unemployment running out.
This great country of ours that was built on the premise of freedom, has become a warmonger. Spending Billions of dollars to fight wars to the benefit of corporations. Men and women have been killed and wounded for their greed and all the while, we continue to let it happen.
Is this the way we want to be remembered. I have all but lost faith in my fellow man.
Spend, Spend, Spend, Spend, Spend, Spend, Spend! Spend us into the abyss.
The meek shall inherit the debt of the Earth!
Las Vegas will always be the hot spot to travel too.The people who have saved there money will survive. Las Vegas is more for retired people and tourist.To many people got a free ride with the houseing boom,its over now move on to another state and find work.Quit crying in your beer and move on.
600 city workers 1400 county workers thats 2000 emp out of work 2000 more forclosers and 2000 more people looking for work and not paying taxes or supporting your jobs. geting unemployment no ins and food stamps welfair more drain on system just longer you will be on unemployment. lets keep up the good work.
My biggest concern is that, when the fire bell rings, the firemen will pull a "job action" by refusing to get out of bed.
so WE govt workers should get shafted like the private sector has? 2 yrs ago you were making twice what we were and we didnt get huge raises, now you want us to get a pay cut? cut our benefits? our retirement? more and more companies are cutting all these things so you think that makes it right? everyone should have decent pay, benefits, and a retirement. maybe we should just shut down the local govt.....so when you complain about the pothole.......suffer, or clogged sewers......suffer or you want to build something........suffer! you all want something for nothing!