Mayor Goodman doesn’t like new four-day city work week

By Dave Toplikar

Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011 | 12:25 p.m.

Mayor Oscar Goodman doesn't hesitate when he's asked what he thinks of the new four-day schedule most Las Vegas city employees will work starting next Monday.

"I am against it," Goodman said Thursday at his weekly news conference at City Hall.

"But I have no choice," the mayor quickly added. "I think prudent government requires being very wise when it comes to how you are spending your money. We only have a limited amount of money. And I think we've squeezed almost as hard as was humanly possible of our employees here to get them to make concessions."

One of those concessions is the four-day schedule at City Hall that is part of an agreement the city reached in October with its largest employees union, which represents about 1,500 workers whose jobs range from engineers to office clerks.

The Las Vegas City Employees Association's agreement includes a 38-hour week, rather than a 40-hour week. Most employees will work 9.5 hours, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays, then take Fridays off.

"That's a long, long work day," Goodman said.

The change in the schedule is expected to save the city $20 million to $25 million over the next two years.

However, employees involved in emergency and essential services, such as police officers, firefighters, jail employees, Municipal Court employees and sewage plant personnel will work normal hours.

Also unaffected are city parks and recreation facilities, some cultural activities and the city's quick-response team that goes out to clean up graffiti.

A phone bank will be staffed on Fridays during normal business hours, using the city's main number at 702-229-6011.

Goodman said the new schedule was the result of concessions that the city had asked of employees as a cost-cutting measure to help bring the budget into balance.

"What we asked them to do was pretty stark," he said. Employees were asked to forgo any pay increases, including no step increases for longevity and now cost-of-living increases. Then they were asked to have benefits and/or salaries to be rolled back by 8 percent.

He said employees stepped up and agreed to cost-cutting measures that amounted to about 75-80 percent of what the city asked.

Goodman said the decision the city council made to approve the four-day work week was made with two promises.

One, when the economy improves, the city can unilaterally re-establish a five-day schedule for City Hall employees. And two, the City Hall administrative staff will be on call on Fridays, with the public community centers and facilities still open and available to the public, he said.

"Basically, it's a shut-down of the administrator part of city hall," he said. However, offices of city council members will be available to handle constituent services on Friday, he said.

"The public will be responded to. That's a promise that I've received from the manager's office," Goodman said.

Goodman said that hopefully, revenue from the consolidated tax that funds the city's budget will continue to rise, "and we'll be able to go back to the five-day work week."

He stressed that he would like to return to a five-day week as soon as possible."

"I'm heartsick that we have to close even a little bit on Friday," he said. "But we'll adjust to the finances and to the times. I think we're on our way back, honest to goodness I do."