Lynchburg City Council ponders 'ugly' budget choices

Lynchburg is slashing the downtown library’s hours and may soon shut down a community center in what could turn out to be just the opening salvo in a series of brutal budget cuts.

“We’ve kept you out of making these choices for a long time,” City Manager Kimball Payne said of the admittedly “ugly” measures Tuesday during a City Council budget retreat.

“We don’t know how to avoid making these choices this year.”

The city — which will formally begin its budget-approval process in March — is grappling with ballooning retirement costs, a request for $4.7 million more for schools, continued clamoring for a police pay raise and other budget stressors.

The city manager is considering recommending dozens of layoffs to compensate. Cutting 20 full-time jobs will save an estimated $1 million depending on the type of positions nixed, he said.

Tuesday’s all-day council retreat covered a broad range of financial pressures points.

“I’m showing you my cards a lot earlier this year than ever before,” Payne said. “… This is where we are now. We’re at the point of talking about what not to do anymore and deciding if the consequences are acceptable or not.”

Immediate cutbacks already being made include forgoing filling vacancies at the Lynchburg Public Library and in the Parks & Recreation Department. Payne said he did not want to authorize new hiring for non-critical positions if they were only going to turn around in a few months and start downsizing.

As a direct result of the manpower crunch, the downtown library’s operating schedule will be reduced from 40 hours a week to 23 hours starting on Feb. 21.

The downtown library has been on the chopping block many times before, but always has been saved by an outcry of public support. Under its reduced schedule, it will no longer be open on Fridays or Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

Vacancies in Parks & Recreation may also lead to the closing of a community center in the near future, Payne said. He declined to say which center was being eyeballed.

The city’s centers operate in low-income neighborhoods and offer a range of programs for children, adults and families. If a community center is closed, the decision will be based on usage history, Payne said.

Council praised city staff for taking the budgetary bull by the horns.

“This is a great administrative decision,” said Councilman H. Cary.

Over the course of Tuesday’s seven-hour retreat, council delved into a number of slippery subjects, some of which have been casting a shadow over the city’s budget for years. Topics included:

Public safety salaries

Unrest over low salaries in the public safety division — and in particular the police force — has been a reoccurring thorn in Lynchburg’s side.

Since 2008, the city’s been observing a general pay freeze, but it made an exception last year for police captains, who each got a 10 percent salary bump. Last year, police officers, firefighters and 911 dispatchers also were given additional bonuses not offered to other employees.

But no long-term solution to the salary discontent has been introduced at this point. Police Chief Parks Snead says poor compensation has led to alarming turnover trends among his officers, leaving the city with a younger and less-experienced police force.

Starting salary for police officers and firefighters is $30,618 a year.

On Tuesday, city administrators presented an array of options that ranged from giving all public safety officers a raise — at an estimated price tag of $2.76 million — to only giving raises to new recruits, whose pay is the least competitive compared to other localities.

The estimated cost of that proposal is $628,800. None of the options presented had an identified funding source. Payne said they were not sure where the money would come from.

Councilman Michael Gillette — who said last October he felt they’d been “hoodwinked” by the police complaints — asked why they weren’t considering doing this for other departments, such as social services, which has even higher turnover rates than public safety.

“The public doesn’t care as much about human services as it does public safety,” Payne responded. “That’s just the reality.”

Payne said no one, citizen or elected official, ever advocates for higher social service salaries, but public safety pay has been a constant point of debate in recent years. If council wanted to see a pay raise proposal for social services, the administration would be glad to present one, he added.

No council member requested such a proposal.

It is not clear what, if any, aspect of Tuesday’s presentation will be included in the city manager’s budget proposal when it’s released in March. Payne said he’s been counseling employees not to expect a raise unless it is dovetailed by layoffs, which echoes comments council members made at their last retreat in October.

Heritage High School

Councilman Cary condemned the city’s 2018 deadline for fixing Heritage as “unacceptable.”

“We’re at a time when interest rates are at an all-time low. Construction rates are at an all-time low. Why in the world are we not trying to put Heritage on a faster track?” Cary asked, comparing it to last week’s council vote to accelerate the next phase of downtown revitalization.

“The kids at Heritage deserve something before 2018 as far as I’m concerned,” Cary said.

Council set the 2018 deadline back in 2008, which predates Cary’s time in office. The stretched-out timeline was picked due to jitters about the city’s ability to pay for the massive school project, which could cost around $60 million or more.

In recent years, council has been scrounging to free up money in the budget for Heritage. Some council members, including Cary, are opposed to raising taxes for the project.

Cary said Tuesday he was hoping if they crunched the numbers, they’d find that the savings achieved by capitalizing on today’s advantageous construction market would allow them to push up the schedule.

Council spent an hour discussing Heritage and proposed several alternate debt scenarios they hoped would make it easier to pay for the work. The scenarios will be analyzed by staff and brought back with a report.

Schools funding

Council asked that school officials be invited to a February work session to explain their budgeting process and offer further justification for their requested $4.7 million increase in local aid.

Several council members said they want to have a better understanding of how the school board makes its decisions.

Councilman Jeff Helgeson reiterated his disappointment, expressed frequently over the years, that the schools do not use the city’s zero-based budgeting system, in which departmental budgets are torn apart every year and rebuilt from scratch.

“I’m not casting aspersions on them,” Helgeson said. “I’m saying let’s unpeel the onion.”

School funding is, by far, the city’s biggest general fund expense. This year, the school division’s request is nearly $37 million.

The city manager did not address what he might recommend for school funding, but none of the ideas he presented Tuesday included level funding the city schools, although some called for a much smaller increase than was requested.

GLTC

The Greater Lynchburg Transit Company’s board sat in for part of the retreat to discuss the system’s financial woes. Officials hope the city will fund a $500,000 reserve that GLTC can use to fix a now-engrained imbalance in its budget that is causing growing deficits.

Council members said they had a confidence problem in GLTC’s financial oversight that would have to be corrected before they felt comfortable increasing funding.

The board members tried to assure council that many improvements had been made and they were ready to prove themselves. Council asked for a written list of the changes made.