09-23-2015 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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5. Striping costs can be reduced in 2016 by $8,000 by having that amount of work completed yet this year (streets that have already been seal coated). The 2015 Budget can accommodate this increased cost based on current projections. 6. Eliminate additional hours for Accounting Clerk (currently increased by five hours per week). This would yield a total reduction of $6,721 with $2,688 of that attributed to the General Fund (levy impact). 7. Do not create In-house Planner position. The total cost of this proposal is projected at $4,680 and the impact to the General Fund is $3,077. 8. Do not hire part-time Utility Billing Clerk (in association with In -House Planner position). We budgeted 16 hours a week for this position. The total cost is $16,640 with a General Fund impact of $5,491). 9. If we reduced the hours of the part-time Utility Billing Clerk to 12 per week, the total cost drops to $12,480 and the General Fund Impact is $4,118 for a General Fund savings of $1,373 over the previous option. 10. Reduce administrative costs in the Parks & Recreation Department. The Parks & Recreation Director has indicated hours could be reduced for the Assistants position, maybe as much as a 1/2 time equivalent. If we were to do that, the savings would be about $30,750. Effectively, this eliminates one assistant position (keep in mind one is an employee and one is a contractor). The reduction amount is based on the assistants being budgeted at about 18.5 hours per week. 11. Another option would be to reduce the full-time director's position to 1/2 time. The rationale for doing so relates to the fact that the Assistants are the primary delivers of programming services. When you consider that registrations have dropped by over by over 45% from 2006 through 2014 and that the Director has indicated he "won't be here much longer" given his ability to retire, it would seem that for the long term benefit of the program, cutting the assistants' position would cause us an even great loss of institutional knowledge and experience. If we were to reduce the Director's position to 1/2 time, the salary and related benefit savings would total about $47,000. Obviously, this option merits discussion relative to the future direction of the program. 12. If the Park & Recreation Director's position were reduced to 1/2 time status, the position would not be typically be eligible for health insurance benefits. That would save about $11,800. The maximum total if all options were selected (not counting those that are mutually exclusive) is $110,065. That would take the levy below 2%. If we only chose items 1, 2, 4, and 5 (the relatively easy options), the total would be $35,500 and the levy reduction would be about 4.75%. Staff also considered a possible reduction in seal coating costs by moving from a seven year cycle to an eight year cycle. While we believe this is a realistic possibility, it will not generate any savings for the first three years given some backlog in streets needing seal coating. Staff will continue the evaluation of this option, but we can't recommend this option for consideration at this time.