Layoffs possible as city seeks to cut back

Spokane city budget cuts starting this summer could cost the Police Department 30 to 40 positions, Police Chief Roger Bragdon said this week.

The fire department could lose 20 to 30 budgeted positions.

Top city officials said they need to trim at least 5 percent from the city’s $121 million general fund in July so they can finish 2004 in the black. Another 2 percent cut would be needed at the start of 2005 to balance expenses with anticipated revenue.

It’s not yet known how the pending cuts will affect city services, including police and fire.

Mayor Jim West this week launched a consultant-guided effort to sort out city priorities and apply cuts to programs or jobs that rank low on a yet-to-be-established list. West said he hopes the city can emerge as a more efficient government.

Officials said layoffs are possible, but they are doing their best to avoid them. Bragdon and other department heads have left vacant positions unfilled in anticipation of the cuts. The Police Department, for example, now has 11 unfilled positions, Bragdon said.

“The 5 percent cut is going to cripple us,” Bragdon said in a recent interview. He said the department has been facing pressure to keep up with drug-related crimes, including car prowling and other property offenses.

The city underwent a 5.9 percent budget cut in 2002 that also reduced staffing.

The police chief is among a core group of city department heads supporting the hiring of a St. Paul, Minn., consultant to help the city find new efficiencies and make cuts in services that are deemed less important.

West said the public is willing to pay only so much for local government, so the city has no choice but to match its services to available revenue.

On Monday, the City Council unanimously approved a resolution declaring an emergency and authorizing a contract with Public Strategies Group as a sole source for the budget-cutting help. The contract is for $150,000, including the consultants’ expenses.

The effort is being led in part by Peter Hutchinson, coauthor of a 2004 book called “The Price of Government,” in which he and collaborator David Osborne said, “Our public institutions must learn to work harder, but more important, they must learn to work smarter.”

Hutchinson was hired by Washington state for a similar exercise two years ago.

“This isn’t your usual one-time fix,” West said in an interview on Wednesday, referring to the usual government approach of taking across-the-board cuts in all departments.

On Thursday, he told his staff during a meeting to focus on an outcome of continuing the city’s most important services.

On Saturday, the City Council will convene in a retreat at 8 a.m. in Room 110 of the Health Sciences Building at the Riverpoint campus to talk about the consultant-driven budget cuts. The session is open to the public.

“I think it’s a good start,” said Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, who attended Thursday’s staff meeting. “This is a budget crisis.”

The mayor and his staff are planning to give the council a recommendation for a revised 2004 budget at the council’s meeting on July 26. In the meantime, city officials will seek comment from citizens.

“Obviously, our window for citizen input is pretty small,” said Marlene Feist, city public affairs officer, during Thursday’s staff session.

Spokane’s budget problems date to the start of 2004, when the city closed its books on 2003 and discovered that spending was higher than anticipated by $2.7 million.

Then, the city settled a series of labor contracts, including retroactive pay, which increased expenditures by $4 million more than had been budgeted.

To establish priorities, the mayor and his executive staff this week decided to use a “citywide vision statement” approved as part of a comprehensive land-use revision several years ago. It was devised through extensive citizen comment, including the Spokane Horizons effort in the mid-1990s.

The priorities include healthy environment, healthy citizens, mobility, safety, growth and learning, reduced vulnerability to citizens at risk, a strong economy and efficient government leadership and internal support services.

Bragdon said, “The comp plan, in my mind, certainly has some validity.”