MARK SCHUMANN

Some, including Councilwoman Pilar Turner, dismiss assertions that the city has made significant cuts in its staff in recent years.  Reported claims of reductions in the city’s employee count are, they say, greatly exaggerated.

“We really haven’t been very serious about trying to make the city efficient,” Turner said recently.

“As far as actual cuts, people losing their jobs or being fired, it has been minimal,” she added, underscoring her point.

Quick to discount and minimize the results of efforts to reign in payroll costs, Turner contends many of the positions eliminated were not filled in the first place.

“There is a game that is played within the cIty.  The CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) reports all open positions.  It doesn’t report those that are budgeted and actually filled,” Turner explained.

Turner has a point. Eliminating budgeted though unfilled positions is not the same as actually laying people off and cutting payroll.

So, how many positions has the city eliminated in recent years?  According to the human resources department, on Dec. 1, 2009, the City of Vero Beach was issuing paychecks to 485 full and part-time employees.  As of Nov. 30 of this year, that number was down 83 to 402, a cut of 18 percent.

The island media continues to tell its readers the city’s staff is “bloated.”  Turner seems to be singing from the same sheet of music.

As advocates for maintaining city services tell it, though, the city simply cannot layoff another employee without negatively impacting the quality of services.

Whether an 18 percent reduction in staff is significant, minimal, or somewhere in between is, it seems, all in the eye of the beholder.