Sunnyside City Budget Hearing

Recently, John Fannin indicated in the Daily Sun News that anyone not making public comments at the City’s Budget Hearing will not be able to complain about the City Budget.  I don’t agree, but perhaps others do.  In any event, only 2/3 of the City Council showed up to the meeting.  If we follow Mr. Fannin’s logic, that means the 1/3 of the Council that did not attend should tender there resignations, as their input is no longer required.

In the last couple of years I have only attended a couple of City Council Meetings, and it is basically pointless to do so.  At the meetings I attended, public comments are not allowed until AFTER  Council has taken action on the agenda items.  Council members show up to the meetings and vote without taking input from citizens.  Mr. Gant recently took some heat for comments made about the citizens of the community, but his failure to attend Budget Meetings is beyond belief.  Mr. Restucci was a no-show as well.  Was this a coincidence or an attempt to avoid taking blame for tax increases that were approved?

There are some things to take notice of in the preliminary budget for 2009.  Because expenses are growing faster than revenue, cuts are going to be necessary.  Council Members Carol Stone and Theresa Hancock seemed to favor a possible freeze in wages for city employees, but they were outvoted on this.  This is important, because the primary reason the budget is out of balance is because employee pay and benefits are growing significantly faster than the City’s economy.  Mr. Gant has stated he believes the raises are necessary despite what the citizens think.  It would be nice to hear his ideas on how to grow the city’s economy to support the raises he favors.  In fact, it would be nice to hear from the other council members how they would like to grow the economy.  I would submit to you, that multiple moratoriums on development are not helping.

In fairness to the City Council, stormwater and sewer tax increases are driven at least in part, by federal and state mandates.  For those of us who have lived in other places, these taxes are nothing new.  The mandates were forced on larger towns first, and now are hitting smaller towns like Sunnyside.  However, the mandates only are a portion of the approved tax increases.  So the City Council has partial responsiblity to take for the tax increases.

Most distressing of all, are the proposed cuts to patrol officers in our community.  Instead of taking police officers off the street, I would suggest cuts in the administration of the Sunnyside Police Department.  Recently, it became public knowledge that the Presidents of Washingston State University, and University of Washington are taking cuts in pay during these tough economic times.  If the heads of the departments in our City Government would do the same, perhaps it would make negotiating a wage freeze easier with their subordinates.  It is time to face the reality that you can only ride the gravy train so far.  The usual way of doing annual pay increases is not an option in the current economy.

Below I am including some comments from our City Manager, Eric Swansen, which were made in the introduction of the 2009 Preliminary Budget.  These comments summarize the proposed cuts being made so that other employees can enjoy their sacred pay increases.

To balance what was a $1.1 Million general fund imbalance, we needed to find serious budget cuts or significant new revenue increases, or a combination of both to bring the budget into balance. The effort to bring this into balance reflects the bulk of the changes for the 2009 budget. These include:

1. Eliminating 2 of the 4 day shift positions in Police Patrol (2.0 FTEs)
2. Eliminating the animal services contract
3. Eliminating 1 Building Plans Examiner position (1.0 FTE)
4. Eliminating 2 Code Enforcement positions (2.0 FTEs)
5. Eliminating the Building Secretary/Permit Tech position (1.0 FTE)
6. Eliminating 1 full-time Parks Maintenance Worker (1.0 FTE)
7. Eliminating the Recreation Coordinator position (1.0 FTE)
8. Eliminating the Recreation Assistant position (1.0 FTE)
9. Reducing seasonal labor in the parks and recreation programs.
10. Reclassifying the Deputy City Clerk position to an Administrative Assistant servicing Community Development and Building/Code Enforcement functions
11. Transferring 3 Street Maintenance Workers to the Stormwater Fund (3.0 FTE)
12. Collecting the 6% sewer utility tax from Port of Sunnyside Industrial Wastewater Treatment Facility customers
13. Obtaining tentative approval from all six labor collective bargaining units to concede annual vacation buy back provisions in their contracts – in lieu of additional staffing cuts and service level reductions in Police and Parks.

 The City of Sunnyside 2009 Preliminary Budget can be found: here