The city of Tempe may be forced to cut 10 percent of its full-time employees because of an $11.5 million budget shortfall, city officials reported.
Due mostly to declining sales-tax revenues, Tempe could eliminate up to 180 positions, City Manager Charlie Meyer said Monday.
The cuts will be made over the next two years.
The city wasn’t projecting any budget deficit at the end of the last fiscal year, Meyer said.
“Programs changed, sales-tax estimates came in and the economy is drowning,” he said. “The numbers have just spiraled downward. They change every day.”
Meyer said the city is still looking at the impact these declining numbers will have, but most likely there will be a big effort to consolidate.
The city isn’t targeting any specific programs or departments right now, he said, but instead going over Tempe’s entire budget step by step.
“We are looking at all parts of the city budget,” Meyer said. “We are continuing to look at organizing differently and consolidating so we can get the same services accomplished by fewer people.”
Tempe is hoping to focus on reducing the deficit over the next two years, by the end of December 2010, Meyer said.
“But the sooner we make these changes the better,” he said. “To avoid layoffs, we will have to get to a lower operating cost.”
The Tempe City Council will meet Dec. 1 to review a series of ideas and provide feedback. Then, city planners and managers will begin forming concrete plans for budget changes and the likely looming job cuts.
“We are going to suggest to the council how we think the city can handle this,” Meyer said. “This is just the beginning of the conversation with the council in terms of what changes may happen with the budget.”
Originally, Meyer said he was planning to suggest 75 to 100 job cuts but increased the number late last week due to an ever-increasing projection of declining sales tax revenues.
Currently, the city of Tempe employs 1,800 full-time staff members — though the even-larger number of part-time employees may also be affected.
Meyer said city employees might be asked to take on greater responsibilities, a big impact of any job cuts.
“The workload doesn’t change,” he said. “Business is as always.”
Currently, the city isn’t looking specifically at changing pay rates. Meyer said there won’t likely be any increases, but there also aren’t any plans for cuts in the works.
ASU architecture junior and city employee Kaylee Colter said she isn’t concerned about losing her job.
“E-mails have been circulating around work, and the city has been making sure employees are part of the conversation and decision-making process,” she said.
Colter, a building supervisor for the Pyle Recreation Center at Rural Road and Southern Avenue, added that the city recently held a public forum about the budget situation.
She said Tempe officials have been transparent about the situation and their possible plans and said as a part-time hourly employee she doesn’t think her job will be cut.
“[The city is] expressing to employees that termination is a last resort,” she said.
Reach the reporter at tessa.muggeridge@asu.edu.
