The last city budget process highlighted once again the difficulty of using that fast-track process to start implementing some budget discipline within the city’s operations. Indeed, that budget not only raised the property taxes of city residents, but also left the city with a surplus – a surplus that no one understands its purpose. There were multiple problems brought up during the hearings – the number of vacant but budgeted positions, the fact that the city isn’t paying its portion of the water and sewer bill, and the fact that the budget largely ignored the WEFAC finding that the city’s financial difficulty can’t be resolved by taxing its way out of it. On top of that, city residents really pushed back on city council people over the passage of that tax increase. To respond to this, City Council is finally exercising its prerogatives as the body that approves spending, to start pulling spending back. This week they started with the staffing at the Fire Department, and they promise to look at all City Departments with an eye to reduce funding for vacant positions and look for better efficiencies.
So here’s what happened this week:
- On Monday, July 7th, there was a joint Finance Committee and Public Safety Committee meeting, where two major ordnances were discussed: 1) Require the WPD and WFD Chiefs to brief the City Council 4 times a year on staffing levels and issues, plus require them to come before Council when their authorized strength gets to 95% to start recruitment of a new Academy; 2) Delete 7 vacant positions in the WFD and remove the budget for those positions from the WFD 2015 budget. This was a fractious meeting (and seriously, the next major joint Finance meeting needs to have leadership other than Mike Brown), where the Chief of Staff and other city employees walked out because the Fire Chief wasn’t first up to speak. Still both ordnances passed the committees and went to the full Council on Thursday.
- On Thursday, July 10th, the Wilmington City Council passed both of those ordnances to law. The vote was 8-5, not a veto-proof majority. Apparently Sam Prado promised a YES vote to Theo Gregory and then changed his mind at the last minute. He says that he was made a deal by the Williams Administration for something, but won’t say what. Prado also voted for the tax increases, even though majorities of the people he represents (including me) were quite opposed. The other NO votes were Justin Wright, Trippi Congo, Sherry Dorsey-Walker and Bob Williams. Justin Wright keeps telling the Council that they need to start with cost reductions in their own staff – which is a fine idea. Except that when the City Council was discussing the idea of reducing the number of City Council people to save costs a few years ago, Wright was a firm NO on that idea, so he’s flip-flopping on cost reductions in his own group. Dorsey-Walker and Williams aren’t especially interested in cost control – both are pretty well captured by the attitude in WPD and WFD that they deserve all of the city’s money. In any event, both bills await Mayor Williams’ approval.
- During the discussion of these ordnances, Theo Gregory read out a piece from the WFD Chief’s Blog:
If not I suggest you find out ASAP and give them a call (302-576-2140)! Better yet come out on Monday July 7th at 5pm to City Council Chambers and express your views about these cuts! These are your representatives in government and they speak for you! Dont allow them to misrepresent your wishes with their own agendas! Come out and speak for yourselves!
On the other hand, if you believe in what they are doing than I will have no choice but to believe that those Council Persons who believe the City of Wilmington should cut firefighter jobs and close fire engines actually do represent you and your council districts wishes and intentions. In doing so, all of those Council districts will be the districts that we will be forced to consider reducing coverage in!
You could hear a pin drop after this was read out – and Chief Goode’s piece was widely considered to be a targeted threat to the districts of the Councilmembers who voted to delete these positions and associated budget.
Unacceptable behavior from a public official. And one who is making the argument for public safety while specifically threatening the safety of the people he is sworn to protect. But this has been pretty standard for this discussion – several of these positions have been vacant for months and there isn’t an academy in sight. Yet the only time that anyone sounded the alarm about public safety around these vacant positions was when they were about to be defunded. If these positions were crucial to public safety, I would imagine that they would get them filled or perhaps they would have told the public they were at risk sooner. Remember that in pretty much any budget (and it works this way in the private sector too), funded vacant positions can act as a slush fund of sorts. You have the money, you just aren’t paying for a person that it is meant to. So you can use it to pay for overtime, for equipment, for maintenance, or other items that don’t need council approval. Still, plenty of council members found this behavior indefensible.
One of the things that Bud Freel brought out in the committee meeting was the WFD’s own data re: response times. The Chief presented that data in the last budget hearing, responding to the impact to response times while the rolling bypass (taking one piece of equipment off line for a day and cycling that stand down through the various engine companies) was in effect. Bud noted that the Chief reported a response time of 2 minutes 40 (or 45 – this is from memory) seconds when the rolling bypass started. That response time is now down to 2 minutes, 20 seconds. If response time is an indicator of either safety or efficiency, then this looks pretty good to me. And no one at the WFD has presented any data that shows how this metric might be improved with the funds from the additional 7 people. Also remember that this ordnance does not lay off anyone. It just elminates currently vacant positions. The last administration conducted a study on how to achieve some cost reductions from the WFD, how to increase safety and in whether the WFD should get into the ambulance business. The recommendations of this report were reasonable (full disclosure, I was one of the citizens called to participate in the Community Focus Group), and yet were ignored by the Williams Administration.
Speaking for myself, I’m very glad that Bud Freel and Theo Gregory are taking WEFAC seriously and getting focused n the City’s budget issues in a way that doesn’t avoid the tough issues. I’m hoping that Mayor Williams doesn’t run away from this difficult issue and signs the ordnances. It is well past time for his administration to pay attention to the city’s structural budget issues.