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Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010 | 10:21 p.m.
Shari Buck
William Robinson
Sun archives
The North Las Vegas City Council heard some tough-love solutions to its budget problems during a special meeting Wednesday night.
The presentation, given by North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Vice President Joe Cain on behalf of a nine-member steering committee appointed by the council in June, outlined ways the city could cut $52 million during the next two years.
The committee consists of members of the business community and met 10 times between July 8 and Sept. 21.
Cain summarized the group's findings in six areas: Conservative fiscal planning, employee salary reductions, no new taxes or fees, economic development, efficiencies and reorganization, and a spending freeze on new projects.
The most vital of those would be cutting employee salaries, which make up 75 to 80 percent of the city’s expenses, Cain said.
“The current salary structure is unsustainable,” Cain said, adding that city employees make an average of more than $100,000 a year in salaries and benefits. “The salaries are out of whack with the private sector...You can’t run a city on those numbers.”
If all employees took a 10 percent pay cut in benefits and salaries, the budget problem would go away, Cain said. “If you look at what the citizens want, that’s probably what they want,” he said.
Cain urged the council to educate people about how much their employees make, including police officers and firefighters with union contracts. He also urged the city to look into public-private partnerships that could potentially lower the cost of city services.
Cain also said the city should avoid opening new facilities or starting new projects that have not been paid for. Aggressively trying to attract new businesses would also help alleviate problems, he said.
Taxes and fees should not be raised, no matter how tempting those options may be, Cain said. It’s unfair to ask already-struggling residents for more of their share, he said.
“All of our businesses are doing more with less,” Cain said. “The city is not going to escape that trend.”
Mayor Shari Buck said the city’s hands are often tied when it comes to negotiating with unions.
“We understand what our limitations are, especially on salaries and benefits,” Buck said. “As of now, what [the unions] are due is what they’re due, and there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“We certainly are very far from this crisis being over,” Buck said. “It’s a guessing game in how it’s all going to turn out.”
Mayor Pro Tem William Robinson said he disagreed. The real threat of layoffs, he said, would send unions a wake-up call.
“Until we make them, we have to wallow in what we have now,” he said. “I’m tired of it. It’s time for us to make some tough decisions.”
It is time to tell our state lawmakers that NRS-288 MUST be changed! Mandated collective bargaining has to be gotten rid of. The idea of public employee unions should be repugnant to every taxpayer and elected official.
Unions are a legitimate and necessary part of the private sector, but they have no place in the public sector.
Unionized public employees across Nevada, and several other states, are clueless on three points:
(1) The public vastly prefers that all public employees take salary and benefit cuts, rather than public agencies making layoffs and diminishing services to the public.
(2) In the event of widespread layoffs of public employees lacking seniority, services to the public will significantly diminish, while the tax burden of the average taxpayer will not diminish one bit.
(3) The long term consequence of the diminution of services to the public, combined with widespread anger on the part of the public about high salaries and expensive benefits for remaining public employees, will be the election of hard-core anti-union elected officials who will not renew public employee unions' contracts and who will begin the process of terminating all public employees not willing to take pay and benefit cuts sufficient to restore the full range of services to the public.
It's the same principle which existed in the French Revolution. It was not so much the King who the people hated, but instead it was his employees who administered public policy.
In the long term, public employees with seniority are simply insuring the election of rabid anti-union Republicans and Independents to public office. That is especially true in Nevada where the real unemployment rate now exceeds 20%.
Cutting basic services like the police and fire dept will go along way toward making new developers stand in line to invest in North Las Vegas.
I have just visited North Las Vegas and with all the traffic I have encountered on 95 & 15 you could have fooled me that unemployment is 20%.
The people that work for north las vegas get paid over 100,000.00 a year..That is RIPPING THE TAXPAYER OFF.. the well is dry ... let them take a 50% cut in pay ...if they dont like it ..FIRE THEM..there are a lot of people out there who will do there job for a lot less then 100,00.00 a year ..
Change the NRS regarding sales taxes--all of it needs to go into the general fund and then out as budgets are revised--this will immediately double or triple our state support of K-12 education and move Nevada from almost last to almost first. Cities and counties will have to explain to the State (Governor, Legislature, people of Nevada) why they are spending so blessed much on salaries. AND since the State will hold the purse, the UNIONS WILL RENEGOTIATE and get realistic.
North Las Vegas is corrupt, I know this first hand. RFP's are won by how much money you can stuff into their pocket.
Fire them all. None of them should be making more than $60k. Its a city job. Teachers should be making more then these drones that just sit on their ass and play solitaire all day.
The mess that the cities, states, counties are in is because of our so called leaders. They kept giving raises, starting new projects and buying into what government does best "Not balancing their budget". Just throw more money and all decisions are easy. Now it is too bad the Unions do not understand "We the people are sick and tired of listening to you bellyache" I would LOVE to see our so called leaders (politicians) have enough guts to say NO MORE...Love it or leave it. Guess how many so called Union Lovers would walk? Hopefully all of them then they could be replaced with people that wanted to work and stop crying "POOR ME"
They all need to take a haircut, management and labor, but no one is willing to do it. It used to be, and I speak from experience having worked for a time in a federal government job in the late 1980's, that pay was somewhat less in the public sector, but the benefits, health, pension was better and you had excellent job security. Now, in the public sector you have all of those things but the salaries for comparable work are at 30-50% premium and sometimes more. It is just unsustainable in the current environment and needs to change.
Did we really need a committee to tell us this?
Cops and ff making well over 100k.
Our elected officials are not looking out for us. Vote them out.
The unions gave up nothing, it is still business as usual.
Let these elected officals know how you feel.
Call them, write them, be heard.