Tempe city officials are staying hopeful amid financial challenges as they progress in finalizing the city budget.
Last week during a budget review, officials proposed a decrease in library hours and reduction of vacant jobs. The library administration and the City Council will continue to review the proposal until the final budget vote on May 28.
Councilman Joel Navarro said the council is determined to reduce staff layoffs.
“I think we’ve got ourselves down to a situation where we’re not going to have any layoffs for this year,” Navarro said.
Instead, the city aims to eliminate almost 50 vacant positions within the city, financial services manager Jerry Hart, said.
“Those are positions that are currently in our budget this year and happen to be vacant,” Hart said. “The reason they’re vacant is because earlier this year we saw revenues were going to come in much lower than we anticipated, so we didn’t fill those positions.”
He added that those positions would be completely eliminated and not included into the upcoming fiscal year, which begins this July.
“Since the revenue wasn’t coming in, there was no need for the city to spend money on salaries for filling those positions,” he said.
According to the city’s proposed financial program for fiscal year 2009-2010, the budget includes funds for both operating and capital costs, totaling $497 million, a 12.3 percent decrease from last year.
Capital spending is expected to decrease by $71.7 million in the upcoming year, primarily because of lower spending in the transit and the water waste programs because of completion of the light rail.
In addition, Navarro said a proposal has been made to decrease the Tempe Public Library’s hours of service. Under the plan, the library would open at 10 a.m. rather than 9 a.m.
“Instead of closing it one or two days a week, they decided that one hour in the morning would help reduce some costs and give us savings in that department,” he said.
However, Teri Metros, deputy community services manager for the library, said nothing has been finalized and the management team is still considering whether to change the hours.
Decreasing the library hours will impact some of the programs offered through the library, and the administration is not sure if it’s worth dissatisfying patrons for that one hour, Metros said.
“It is not official at this point, and it may not be,” she added. “One of our goals here is to minimize the impact on the public.”
Hart added that when Tempe’s stimulus funds come through from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it will be allocated toward the capital budget fund, which helps to finance capital projects such as improvements in water and waste facilities, streets and major park renovations.
“The city has not to my knowledge received any final determinations as to what projects are to be funded specifically,” he said.
Navarro said he believes the city is in a good spot in having enough reserve money to avoid layoffs.
Reach the reporter at bemattox@asu.edu.
