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Vancouver plans to cut 65-75 jobs

Employees will receive letters this week

By Andrea Damewood
Published: January 26, 2010, 12:00am

The City of Vancouver is eliminating 65 to 75 positions starting this week, part of what City Manager Pat McDonnell called “immediate and necessary actions” to address a $6 million deficit in the 2010 budget.

The cuts could represent up to 6.8 percent of the city’s 1,100-person work force. McDonnell said the move should cover about 75 percent of the anticipated $6 million budget shortfall.

Employees from every department will be affected, with reductions happening through limited retirement incentives, layoffs and the elimination of vacant positions across the city, he wrote in a Jan. 19 letter to the mayor and city council.

The city will send letters to affected employees Tuesday, McDonnell said. Specific details about cuts will not be revealed until early February to protect employee privacy, he wrote. He also declined to say which departments would be hardest hit by reductions.

The layoffs come as the city prepares its spring supplemental budget. The timing also gives laid-off workers access to a federal subsidy for COBRA health care premiums set to expire next month, McDonnell explained.

City council members will be briefed on the cuts as part of a spring supplemental budget workshop on Feb. 1. They also have scheduled a financial retreat for Feb. 22 before the amended budget is adopted mid-March.

The city is still working out the details on how many of the cuts will come through retirements, layoffs and eliminating empty positions, McDonnell said.

However, he wrote that the early retirement packages represent a “strategic, long-term measure” that could save the city as much as $570,000 this year and up to $2.6 million in the coming years.

More cuts likely

This likely won’t be the end of layoffs and other changes at the city, which faces an expected $10 million to $12 million shortfall in 2011.

McDonnell wrote he “expects further actions this year as we continue to improve efficiencies and position the organization to best serve our citizens’ highest priorities within our current resources.”

This year, the city will also look at “flattening and realigning some services and programs” at Development Review Services, equipment and maintenance shops, grounds maintenance and in support services, he wrote.

The city writes its budget through a process called Horizons. The public and city council help shape the budget, focusing on making the least cuts in departments that have been identified by voters as city priorities.

City department heads have been looking for places to save money for the last six months.

“We’ve known we were going to have some difficulties,” McDonnell said.

These reductions are in addition to the elimination of 57 positions and the freezing of 24 vacant jobs in the last year to stave off a $15.5 million shortfall.

McDonnell listed measures Vancouver took to improve austerity: nonunion and management employees are paying more of their health care costs; travel and training has been curtailed; voluntary furloughs and hours reductions have been used; and management and nonunion employees, along with most union employees, did not receive a cost-of-living pay increase.

The recession has made worse what has been a years-long problem of city expense growth outpacing revenue growth, McDonnell wrote.

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“A key component to solving that structural deficit will be a restructuring of the city’s total compensation strategy for its employees,” he wrote. “Such challenges will require a careful consideration of the city of Vancouver’s role in the community, balancing what the community values and what it can afford.”

Councilor Jeanne Harris said that the layoffs and reductions “are certainly not a surprise to anyone — we’ve been talking about this for some time.”

The cuts were first spoken of in November, when staff updated the council on the Horizons process. At that time, Assistant City Manager Betsy Williams said: “Perhaps we can no longer afford to be a ‘full service city,’” a notion that’s been repeated often by others in the months since.

Mayor Tim Leavitt said he was sure the city manager “pursued all avenues that he could in order to avoid laying people off. But we’ve come to the point where you have to bite the bullet.”

Andrea Damewood: 360-735-4542; andrea.damewood@columbian.com.

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