BY MARK SCHUMANN

At the conclusion of the City Council’s May 14 budget workshop, City Manager Jim O’Connor and Finance Director Cindy Lawson were asked to develop a plan for making well-considered, targeted budget cuts of up to 10.9 percent.  The cuts were to take effect in the second quarter of the 2013/2014 fiscal year.

O’Connor was also asked to consider streamlining the city’s organizational chart, relocating workers so employees are not scattered across the city, and identifying surplus property for possible sale.

The Council charged O’Connor to find budget cuts totaling up to 10.9 percent.  Yet, each Council member acknowledged that at least for the first three years following the sale of Vero Electric, the cuts and/or tax increases needed to balance the general fund budget are likely to be no more than $1 million, or approximately 5 percent of the current budget.

The Council was clear that it did not want to make mindless, across the board cuts, preferring instead to make more strategic, targeted reductions.

O’Connor emailed his department heads the following day, giving them three working days to develop plans for cutting spending from 10.9 percent to 14.9 percent.  The cuts, O’Connor said, are to beginning October 1, 2013, not in April, 2014 as the Council requested.

O’Connor said he asked all department heads to at least consider how they might make spending cuts of up to 14.9 percent, because some departments will likely be spared deep cuts.  Other departments, then, will have to absorb cuts of more than 10.9 percent.

As a result of the proposed budget cuts, thirty or more full time employees will likely lose their jobs.

The city’s staff is already down 20 percent from where it peaked six years ago.  Laying of an additional 30 or more city workers, O’Connor said, are sure to impact services.

Police Chief David Curry told his staff the proposed budget cuts would force the consolidation of the city’s dispatch center with the County’s 911 call center.  A similar move didn’t work out so well for the City of Sebastian, which reversed its decision and is again handling its own dispatching.

Recreation Department Director Rob Slezak said trimming his budget by 10.9 percent would require laying off two full time employees, including the long-time head of the Riverside Racquet Complex.  News of Slezak’s plan sparked a number of critical emails from patrons of the city’s tennis and racquetball courts.

Not too long ago, Councilwoman Pilar Turner asked rhetorically, “What organization cannot cut 15 percent from its budget?”

Well, how about an organization that has already slashed its budget by 25 percent?

To make an additional 15 percent in spending cuts would be to play into the hands of the limited-government crowd, who, if the truth be known, would prefer to see the city disincorporated and absorbed by the County.

The Council troika has never been forthright about the likely impact of selling the city’s electric system without simultaneously raising taxes.  Now the harsh consequences of their plan are beginning to surface.